By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

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

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.

In 2004, voters approved a 26-cent increase in the debt-service levy, which was 57 cents at the time, to pay for the $7 million bond issue. They also approved a 27-cent hike in the operating levy of $2.75, via a full waiver of the Proposition C rollback, to make payments on the $4 million lease-purchase.

That pushed the operating ceiling to $3.02 and the debt-service levy to 83 cents, for a total levy of $3.85.

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, with voter approval, to replace the lease-purchase agreement with a bond issue.

Slagle said a bond refinancing would convert the lease-purchase agreement into a general-obligation bond issue with the possibility of a better interest rate.

The district’s total levy is now $3.6963. Slagle said the levy would be the same if voters approve the financing switch.

The district would move 11.63 cents from the operating levy to the debt-service levy to pay for the new bond issue. The debt-service levy would be 83 cents, the operating levy would be $2.75, and the capital-projects levy would be 11.63 cents.

The owner of a house valued at $100,000 pays $702.30 in school taxes based on a total levy of $3.6963.

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

Also in Aurora, voters will elect three directors to the school board 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.

Voters also will choose two members of the Aurora 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.

Races have developed in several other communities in Lawrence County.