No Re-Vote
On Gym Bond
In S. Royalton
By M. D. Drysdale

There will be no re-vote of the $3.88-million school bond issue in South Royalton, after all.

The School Board Tuesday evening voted to reject the petition of 152 voters which had been received earlier this month. The board was responding to legal advice from Atty. J. Paul Giuliani, that the petition was invalid because it was worded incorrectly.

The petition had never been accepted by the board, because the meeting in which it was first presented did not have a quorum, according to Geo Honigford, who serves on both the school board and the building committee.

Rather, it had been sent to the Secretary of State’s office by the Town Clerk, who questioned some of the wording. The document had been penned by one of the petitioners, Lester Corwin, who died Oct. 2.

Honigford said that Kathy DeWolfe at the Secretary of State’s office thought the wording was probably OK but she strongly recommended that an opinion be sought from Giuliani, a former assistant secretary of state who is one of the top legal authorities on municipal law.

In an email about a week ago, Honigford said, Giuliani informed the school board that the petition was not valid because it called for a "revote." Such a petition is supposed to call either for a "recision," or a "reconsideration," he said.

A petition for a re-vote requires the school board to decide which of those two options the petitioners really wanted, Giuliani declared, and the board does not have that power.

The email said, in part, "the petition the board has before it requires action that the board is powerless to provide."

Honigford said that Giuliani had given the board two options:

• Reject the petition; or

• Reject the petition but schedule a second vote on the gymnasium bond issue anyway.

In discussing those options Tuesday, Honigford noted that the board had members had to determine what they thought was the "will of the people." Given that the bond issue passed Sept. 11 by a vote of 342-293, he said, while the petition had just 152 votes, the board unanimously decided not to schedule a second vote.

The $3.88 million project includes a new gym, freeing up a good deal of multi-use space within the school, and a new lobby area with what officials said would be a safer flow of traffic around the pick-up area. Two earlier proposals for a new gymnasium were more expensive, and had been defeated.

It is expected to add about 13 cents to the Royalton tax rate, or an additional $200 on the tax bill of a $150,000 house.