By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

AURORA, Mo. — Voters in the Aurora R-8 School District will be asked in the April 8 election to decide whether a $4 million lease-purchase agreement should become a general-obligation bond issue.

Dale Slagle, superintendent, said voters in 2004 approved the lease-purchase agreement and a $7 million general-obligation bond issue to construct a new high school.

At the time, the district had to seek two funding sources because it did not have the bonding capacity for an $11 million bond issue. Slagle said the school was completed in January 2007, and that the district now has the bonding capacity to handle the lease-purchase agreement.

He said a bond refinancing would convert the lease-purchase agreement into a general-obligation bond issue. Payments on the bond issue would be made via a levy of 11.63 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. Payments from the district’s operating funds would be replaced by payments from the debt-service fund.

The new bond issue, if approved by voters by a four-sevenths majority, would end in 2024, the same year the lease-purchase agreement was to end.

Slagle said the district is hoping for a better interest rate with the bond issue.

“Those rates have gone up of late,” he said. “If we can’t get better rates, there’s not much incentive to do it.”

Also in Aurora, voters will select three school board members for three-year terms. The candidates are Don Sparks, Scott Welch and Eric Seifried, all incumbents, and Michele Parbury, Derek Sears, Mark McCully and Cherri Nash.

Aurora voters also will choose two members of the City Council for three-year terms. The candidates are Steven W. Kahre and Dan Broyles, the incumbents, and Eddie Breeding, Stephen Wiles and Jerry Lee West.

Elsewhere in Lawrence County, voters will elect candidates for city and school offices.

Marionville

Voters will choose three directors for three-year terms on the school board. The candidates are Theresa Setzer, Chris Murphy and Kay Kerans, all incumbents, and Brandon White and Rebecca Walker.

A mayor will be chosen for a two-year term. The candidates are Doris Rapp, the incumbent, and David Arnsmeyer.