With no declared opposition to the Washtenaw Intermediate School District’s special ed millage, the red-and-white signs outside polling places announcing “It’s okay to vote no” took many voters by surprise.
Even WISD superintendent Scott Menzel says he learned about the opposition only “the week before the election. There was an email from Manchester going around with a copy of an email from the Washtenaw County Republican Party urging people to vote no.”
County party chair John Taylor says the Republicans got a late start late because “we didn’t take a position until our meeting the second Thursday of April. We made 175 signs and put them up at polling places all over the county” the day before the May 3 election. The party also paid for about 50,000 negative robocalls: “We chose people who might be likely to vote no and individuals who didn’t know there was an election.”
It’s hard to pass a millage over organized opposition, but this one survived: the 32,464 people who voted approved it by a margin of 59 to 41 percent. Though the Republicans, in Taylor’s words, “tried to show that it was a large tax increase to increase the schools’ general fund[s],” many school supporters welcomed it for just that reason. Replacing special ed costs that now come from the Ann Arbor Public Schools’ general fund will increase the district’s discretionary budget by more than $9 million a year.
Menzel thinks the Republicans’ opposition may actually have helped the millage pass. “They probably raised the awareness of people who might not have gone to the polls. Other than that, it’s hard to say what they achieved.”
