The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Passes In La Harpe; Fails Overall
By David Grimes for The Quill
Voters in three of four Hancock County school districts said no Tuesday to a proposed new high school district that would have drawn a student population of about 550 from LaHarpe, Dallas City, Carthage and Nauvoo-Colusa.
The school reorganization question was accompanied by an $18 million building bond question.
A third advisory question asked voters if they approved the merger if school construction, originally proposed for somewhere along Illinois 94 north of Carthage and near the geographical center of the four school districts, was postponed for up to three years in order to await Capital Development Board funding applied for last year and expected to underwrite about half the construction cost of a new high school.
Approval from 50 percent of all voters plus 1 in each of the four districts involved was required for passage of the reorganization measure to pass.
Carthage School District residents voted 778 to 566 not to approve the measure.
LaHarpe voters cast 481 votes for the school merger and 235 votes against it.
Vote counts for Dallas City and Nauvoo-Colusa precincts were 205 votes for and 220 against, and 253 for and 647 against, respectively, regarding the convergence proposal.
Dallas voters cast 170 ballots for the building bond proposal and 259 against, while Nauvoo-Colusa drew 360 yes votes and 457 votes against the finance measure.
Proponents of the four-way high school reorganization began laying plans for sharing information with district residents in January 2004.
Had the proposition found favor at the polls, the new high school district would have been the first such convergence in the state of Illinois.
LaHarpe voters approved building bond measure by a count of 361 to 351, while the same proposal met defeat at Carthage by a count of 890 against and 453 for the measure.
On the third question regarding postponement of construction of a new high school, LaHarpe again voted for the measure, 421 to 245.
In Carthage, voting for postponement of school construction resulted in 662 votes for the postponement and 598 votes against it.