Journal Staff Report

Voters in Dolores County’s School District Re-2J rejected a proposal to replace their present decrepit high school in Dove Creek with a new $5.5-million facility by just 13 votes out of nearly 800 ballots cast last Tuesday.

Steve Cole, Re-2J’s business manager, said that while school officials and students were naturally disappointed by the outcome, the closeness of the vote in the fiscally conservative county demonstrated just how much effort supporters had put into passing the bond issue.

"We had a local committee that worked for about six months on it and traveled around to the various communities in the district," Cole said, "so there was a lot of work done."

But the outcome was anyone’s guess, he added, "so I guess we weren’t terribly surprised.

"We really didn’t know what to think," he said. "There was very little said in the community before the election, so we didn’t know if there were a lot of support for it or not.

"So I guess we’re not terribly surprised."

Cole explained that the proposed high school would have had a maximum capacity of about 500 students and that its design had been developed after gathering community input. The current facility is 50 years old, he said, and parts of it are in need of major rehabilitation.

Whether another attempt to pass a bond measure will be attempted at the next election is still to be decided, he said.

"At our next school-board meeting, the board is going to have to decide if they want to tackle it again," he said, "or if they want to propose some kind of alternative like putting money into our existing building, or do nothing at all."

Opposition to the proposal seemed to focus only on one subject, he said.

"I haven’t heard any arguments around town other than, Why should we pay more taxes?’," he said, even though Re-2J’s mill levy is the lowest in the area.

"Who can figure?"