Three quarters of the voters in Effingham County agreed to a fifth round of a penny-per-dollar sales tax for education.
With all 17 precincts counted, as well as early and absentee ballots, 1,395 voters, or 75 percent, agreed to another round of Education Special-Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (ESPLOST) and 456, or 25 percent, voted against it. The current ESPLOST expires in June 2017.
Turnout was 5 percent of the county’s 35,000 registered voters.
“We’re very excited,” said school Superintendent Randy Shearouse. “It’s a great day.” He said the school system has constructed buildings, bought technology and books and has little debt, thanks to the sales tax funds.
School board Chairman Lamar Allen said the vote was pretty much what he expected.
“I can go build schools now,” he said.
The tax will collect up to $60 million, including $15 million in bonds that will permit the district to begin projects before the sales tax money is collected. Proceeds from the sales tax will pay for the bonds.
Topping the spending list are $18 million for a new Rincon Elementary School and $7 million for a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) academy at the Effingham College and Career Academy. The STEM lab will double the size of the Career Academy. The new space will open in fall of 2016.
The new Rincon Elementary School will open in fall 2017.
The approval of the bond money does not necessarily mean all of it will be used, but it will be available if needed.
Over five years, the district also will spend $5 million for buses, $4 million for maintenance, $4 million for technology and $4 million for textbooks. Another $1 million will go for new heating, ventilation and air conditioning at Effingham County High School. Those expenses are spending priorities that the board already has established.
“There is a fairly firm commitment of expenditures of $59 million,” said Slade Helmly, executive director of administrative services.
Possible projects include $2 million for an agriculture center, $2 million for a field house at ECHS, $1 million for air conditioning on all school buses, $750,000 for security vestibules at schools and $300,000 worth of track improvements.
Voters in Effingham have never turned down ESPLOST.
ESPLOST
For: 75 percent
Against: 25 percent