Operating Levy on the Ballot in the Sartell-St. Stephen District

SARTELL -- The Sartell-St. Stephen school district has a levy question on next week's ballot. Superintendent Jeff Schwiebert says the operating levy is needed to cover the day to day costs of running the new high school that is currently being built.

Now as a part of building that new high school, we're adding 300,000 square feet that need to be taken care of across the district.  And so we're now asking the district patrons to take a look at an operational levy which will basically take care of the things necessary to clean, heat, cool take care of the outside areas, the things that go along with that building project.

Schwiebert says money from the levy would also be used for education like maintaining class size, and on technology upgrades.

The levy would replace the current $325 per student levy, and increase it to $760 per student for the next 10 years.

If it passes, a $200,000 home in the district will have a property tax increase of about $165 a year.