Hickman Mills approves bond to help with budget crisis, taps new district leaders
The Hickman Mills School District will welcome several new faces to its school board in the coming weeks, along with a new source of partial relief to the multimillion-dollar debt plaguing the district.
Two incumbents, Byron Townsend and Irene Kendrick, were re-elected to their seats on the seven-member board. They will be joined by one returning board member, Evelyn Hildebrand.
Their terms will begin later this month after election results are certified by local election boards.
Voters also passed a $20 million pair of bond questions which will free up about $3.4 million a year in the district’s general fund.
Tuesday’s election sets the tone for what district leaders hope will be a period of rebuilding from an ongoing financial crisis. The Hickman Mills School District is currently about $14 million in debt, a figure which district leaders attribute partly to financial mismanagement and partly to recent changes to the Jackson County property tax assessment cycle.
Earlier this year, the board voted for a debt mitigation plan that involved slashing upwards of 70 jobs, closing a historic elementary school and cutting dozens of district programs and contracts. Interim Superintendent Dr. Dennis Carpenter previously said that the district would have likely closed entirely within two years without a similar level of cuts.
The district also continues to fight for full accreditation while facing an ongoing state audit.
Two-pronged bond passes
Voters opted Tuesday night to enact a general obligation bond and an accompanying debt services levy, according to unofficial election results from the Jackson County and Kansas City election boards. Collectively, the two measures will add some flexibility to the district’s budget without raising rates for taxpayers.
Question 1, the $20 million general obligation bond, passed with about 80.5% of the vote, or 2,369 votes.
General obligation bonds, or GO bonds, are usually used to fund public projects that won’t generate any profit, such as parks maintenance, road upgrades or, in this case, to pay down the district’s debt. In this case, the district will borrow $20 million against future property tax payments to pay bills and reduce the district’s debt.
Of each property tax payment, $1.10 per $100 of taxable value currently goes toward the district’s debt service. With the new GO bond revenue, the district will need to use a lower proportion — about 30 cents less per $100 — of current property tax payments in order to fund the same amount of debt services. That’s where the second bond question comes in, rerouting the extra money to the district’s operation budget.
Voters approved the second bond question with about 74.9% of the vote, or 2,197 votes, according to unofficial results. The two measures in tandem will fund the district’s operating budget at a higher level without an additional burden to taxpayers.
District officials had been overwhelmingly supportive of the GO bond and levy transfer package, hailing the joint proposal as “a sustainable path forward that keeps our schools strong and ensures our district remains financially sound for years to come.”
Hickman Mills voters have approved similar bond issues several times in the past. A $30 million bond passed in 2020, and a $19 million general obligation bond passed in 2016.
Meet the new school board members
Five school board candidates made it to Tuesday night’s ballot, and voters selected three.
Byron Townsend received the most votes, accruing 1305 votes. Irene Kendrick received 1291 votes while Evelyn Hildebrand received 1240 votes. The winners will serve three-year terms.
Incumbent April Cushing and newcomer Matthew E. Williams were not successful in their bids for school board.
Evelyn Hildebrand rejoins the board after a tumultuous 2016 election season, during which she was denied her seat over her personal property tax debt status and then appealed to a Jackson County court. Hildebrand ultimately reclaimed her seat after her replacement resigned in October 2016.
The substitute teacher, mother and grandmother has a bachelor’s degree in education.
Hickman Mills School Board President Irene Kendrick was re-elected Tuesday night to a third term. Kendrick is semi-retired but currently works as a substitute teacher in Grandview, where she also serves as an alderman and sits on various civic committees.
Kendrick was the only current school board member to vote against the series of budget cuts intended to address Hickman Mills’ $14 million deficit. She has called for more public-focused oversight of the district’s bond funding, which she hopes to use for building maintenance.
Student achievement and teacher retention and recruitment were also focal points of her re-election campaign.
Byron Townsend won his fourth term on the Hickman Mills School Board Tuesday night. Townsend, a retired U.S. Postal Service mail carrier, is currently the board’s vice president.
Townsend is also currently in the running for a seat on the Jackson County Legislature. A primary election in the legislative race will take place in August.
Townsend cast one of the five votes in favor of the package of significant budget cuts passed by the board earlier this year. He was previously one of the subjects of a complaint investigated by the Missouri attorney general’s office in 2022, alleging improper spending of district funds and approving a contract without proper board oversight.
Townsend told KCUR at the time that the spending fell within his discretionary authority as board president.
