Lakewood schools take levies off of April 28 ballot

The Lakewood School District will not run any levies for the April 28 special election and have rescinded their previous two proposed measures.

The school board for the district voted 5-0 on March 11 to take back the district's two proposed levies. They had previously voted to put them on the ballot during their Feb. 26 meeting.

The situation with COVID-19, the new coronavirus, is rapidly evolving and district officials felt that it was not the right time to put two levies before the voters.

“This happened because with the state of emergency declared by the government and the coronavirus spreading in the area, and specifically around our community,” said Lakewood School District Superintendent Scott Peacock. "We felt it was important to focus on the community’s well-being and health “The levy election can wait."

Peacock said the health of Lakewood residents should be prioritized at the moment, which is why the district put the special election on hold.

“We really wanted to make sure that we were able to focus on the health of Lakewood at this point,” said Peacock.

“We want to give people the space to take care of all the things that are on their mind right now and not have to worry about this particular issue,” he said.

The ballots have not been printed by the Snohomish County Elections office yet and so the district will not have any financial cost for rescinding the levies.

The district also acted before the deadline to cancel elections.

“We rescinded it prior to the ballots getting published and the election actually having to be run,” said Peacock.

The two levies that the district put on the ballot were two that were rejected by the voters earlier in February.

The first was a Programs and Operations levy that would provide funding to support services such as mental health support and other programs not funded by the state legislature, including such things as athletics and band.

The second levy was a Capital Improvements and Technology levy that would provide further investments into the district's technology for students and provide funds for building maintenance.

Both levies were renewals of previously passed levies, so they would not necessarily be new taxes.

“We will decide at a later time when we’re going to run the levy special election,” said Peacock.

“We will have the opportunity to re-examine conditions in the community and discuss what propositions will be on the ballot and when the best time would be for the community to run those propositions,” he said.