School board considering adding extra seat for CB

Also talk of ending term limits

The Gunnison Watershed School District is preparing a couple of ballot questions for the November election, but the board of education wants to make sure there’s enough interest in the two open board seats to justify spending the $20,000 they have budgeted.

With the first deadlines of the election season coming up at the end of August, the board talked at a meeting Monday, August 12 about possible ballot questions related to the geographic distribution of representatives on the school board, known as district directors, and board member term limits.
This year, the election could decide two seats on the school board, one from either end of the valley. Because of a general lack of interest by members of the community in serving on the board of education, the district hasn’t had to hold an election for school board candidates in a decade. During the same period, the size of the Crested Butte Community School has nearly doubled.
Without the need for an election to decide school board candidates, the district has avoided spending the money to ask voters about the other items.
School board president Jim Perkins said, “On subject of elections, over time we have talked about two different ideas that we would attach to the ballot, if we had an election. One of those was the idea of having a ballot question related to director districts.”
Although the number of students at CBCS is growing, the number of registered voters in each geographic area, and not the number of students, determines representation on the board. Currently there is one board member representing an area roughly north of Round Mountain and four members representing areas south of that line.
With 3,586 active registered voters in the north and 6,475 in the south, the board is considering a move that would exchange a board representative from the south end of the district with one from the north end.
“The question would be, should we remain as we are, with four director districts in the Gunnison end of the valley and one in the north end of the valley? Should we do something different in a ballot question?” Perkins asked. “It would not go into effect for another two years, with the next election, but it would at least be on the books.”
And while some members of the board believed that, since there’s been little interest in the past from the Crested Butte community in serving, it could be too difficult to fill two board seats.
Superintendent Doug Tredway said two of the three petitions to run were taken out by people from Crested Butte. He also thought if it was necessary, it could work to have one representative from north of Round Mountain, three from south of Round Mountain and a fifth as an at-large director from anywhere in the district.
“I thought that would be a solution to the percentages there,” Tredway said. “To redraw that line, it’s very difficult.”
The second ballot question the board is considering is related to term limits and is rooted in the same apparent lack of interest in serving on the school board. It would ask voters to either do away with the two-term limit or increase the limit to three terms.
The first deadline of the election season is August 27, Perkins said, before which the political subdivisions have to sign an inter-governmental agreement for the 2013 coordinated election. August 30 is the last day people interested in serving on the board can submit a petition for nomination, and September 6 is the last day the district can back out of the election if there’s not enough interest.
The school board will take a look at ballot language at their meeting on August 26.