A Tale of Two Votes

When West Ashleyians step into voting booths on Tuesday, Nov. 4 to cast their ballots in the mid-term General Election, they won’t see much in the way of contested local races.
This should pave the way for more attention on two important county referendums — one that would build more schools and another that would build more libraries.
Sure, they will see the same statewide races everyone will see across South Carolina — Haley vs. Sheheen for governor, Sellers vs. McMaster for lieutenant governor, and on down the line.
West Ashley voters will only see nine races specific to them, ranging from state House seats to St. Andrews Dist. 10 Constituent School Board.
And one of those, for former House Speaker Bobby Harrell’s seat, may be recast in the coming weeks due to court wrangling over his stepping down as part of a plea bargain in the face of a scandal regarding his campaign finances.
The first referendum would be to extend the current 1-cent special local option sales tax for public K-12 capital funding projects. The referendum would be to extend the current six-year penny tax, set to expire in 2016, for another six years through 2022.
School officials have projected the extension would bring in an additional $530 million that would allow for a raft of major school-building projects across the county. Recent sales-tax projects have revamped the school district, discarding moribund graying facilities for airy, more efficient, and inspiring designed schools.
Standing for the first time on the second floor space that will become her school’s massive rooftop garden, St. Andrews School of Math And Science principal Amy Cario gasps.
“I didn’t know it was going to be so big,” she exclaims to Jeff Borowy,  deputy for capital programs at the Charleston County School District.
Borowy is overseeing work on the new SASMS campus that was begun late under his predecessor Bill Lewis, and will be completed in time for the 2015-2016 school year, much later than had been originally projected.
Tardiness aside, the differences between the two facilities may serve as a bellwether for the change in scope another half-billion dollars for schools could render for the community.
The former SASMS served 731 students in just under 44,000 square feet. Parking was bad, parents blocked neighboring streets at drop-of and pick-up times, and the building, while beloved had outlived its usefulness.
The new SASMS is a head-turner. Weighing in at over 105,000 square feet and only adding 19 students, there will be when it opens 140 square feet for each kid, compared to 60 square feet before.
Utilizing nearly the entire property, the school attempts to squeeze every inch into use – playgrounds have been scrapped for parking, soaring two-story entrances pull double duty as teaching spaces stairwells, and so on.
The school districts referendum would build and modernize schools all over the county, with the biggest ticket item being slated for a second high school in Mt. Pleasant — the current one opened the year with 3,900 students, the biggest in the state.
In West Ashley, the proposed referendum would build new middle schools, linking a new C.E. Williams to the West Ashley High School campus, where an advanced studies academy would be built to help stop so many kids going to Academic Magnet, James Island Charter High, and various private schools for headier learning.
Voters will get to decide if schools like SASMS is worth a penny cent tax on everything they buy and or sell. For six years. A gasping Cario appears sold.
All this is going on down Windermere Boulevard and nearly within shouting distance of the former home of the late John Graham Altman, the former School Board chair and member many blame for hamstringing the school districts finances for decades.
Halfway down the street sits the county South Windermere public library. Compared to modern facilities, it appears to be as old as many square feet it has, 6,000.
Standing outside that aging library, Janet Segal, chair of the board of trustees for the county library system, takes a moment to recap their referendum: bigger boxes, more windows, better computers, plentiful public meeting spaces and rooms cost money. Especially spread out between 16 different library facilities.
In short, the county library system is asking for a little more than $100 million.
Included in their bond plans would be to renovate South Windermere and St. Andrews facilities, build a 20,000-square foot new library near the intersection of Bees Ferry Road and Glenn McConnell Boulevard, with an analogue on Folly Road for the James Island set.
Segal reiterated, much like she did when she held a public meeting inside South Windermere in April, that the libraries have received no new bonded monies since the mid-‘80s, and is now lagging behind in several comparative matrixes and technologies.
Conventional wisdom has it that voters hate to read referendums, especially if they are under-informed going into the booth. This year might be an election where voters, at least in West Ashley might want to slow down and savor the choices democracy has afforded them.