ARLINGTON — Voters here rejected a school bus replacement levy for the second time in four months, preliminary results show.
The $3 million proposal, meant to replace half of the Arlington School District’s bus fleet, was failing by 142 votes as of Wednesday evening. It was the only measure on the Feb. 10 Snohomish County ballot.
Out of 5,639 votes counted, 52.5 percent were against the levy and 47.5 percent were in favor of it.
The voter turnout was lower than the district’s first attempt to pass the levy in November. Then, it failed by 200 votes out of 9,858.
The district has 53 school buses, used by about 2,400 of the district’s 5,400 students. Mechanical problems are becoming increasingly common for the older buses. One of the buses has been in use for about 28 years, according to the district.
District officials hoped to buy 26 new buses and retire the oldest vehicles in the fleet, then start saving up state dollars to replace buses more regularly in the future.
“We believe we presented to our voters the most prudent plan which would have maximized the use of state dollars,” Superintendent Kristine McDuffy said in a statement Wednesday evening. “Unfortunately, the ‘make due’ plan will necessitate the use of dollars that would have otherwise been available for classrooms.”
In light of the levy’s back-to-back failures, the school board is tasked with deciding which district dollars to direct toward buses and when to do so. At this point, it’s unlikely a levy would come back in front of voters anytime soon, district spokeswoman Andrea Conley said. However, that option hasn’t been ruled out.
“We’re going to have to replace some of the buses because we can’t get parts for them anymore,” Conley said. “We’ll be looking at how many we can replace and what funding is available.”
Wednesday evening’s election results include most mail-in votes and all ballots picked up from drop boxes Tuesday night, county elections manager Garth Fell said.
It does not include military and overseas votes or ballots that may have signature problems, he said.
The county plans to certify the results Feb. 24.
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