On Nov. 3, Allendale Public Schools voters will decide separately on a $66.7 million plan to repair and expand existing schools and a $27 million multipurpose building. The district says the debt tax rate would stay at 10.06 mills but would be collected for more years.
ALLENDALE — After narrow and then wider defeats in 2024 and 2025, Allendale Public Schools is going back to voters on Nov. 3. This time it has split its building plan in two, so residents can back repairs to existing schools without also approving a new multipurpose building.
There are two separate questions, and each passes or fails on its own:
Treasury records list Fanning Howey as the architect for both proposals.
On its bond page, the district says Proposal 1 would pay for security improvements in every school, new wood and metal shops, a robotics space and a STEM lab at the high school. At the Early Childhood Center it would add a secure entry, classrooms, a multipurpose room, a media center and kitchen space. Every school would get backup generators, fire alarms and roof, plumbing and heating/cooling work, along with lighting, technology and parking upgrades. The baseball field would move, and the softball, soccer and football fields and the track would be improved. Elementary playgrounds would get accessibility work.
Proposal 2 would build a stand-alone building east of the high school. According to the district, it would include a community walking track, a marching band practice field, an indoor field for sports such as baseball, volleyball, football and soccer, space for career-tech, physical education and health classes, team rooms, a weight and fitness room, restrooms and concessions, and space for events.
The district says Ottawa Area ISD's Careerline Tech Center "has an extensive waiting list," and argues that local shop and lab space would help meet that demand.
Property owners in the district pay a debt levy of 10.06 mills today. In 2023 the levy was 12 mills, according to board minutes: 10.06 mills for older debt in the state's School Loan Revolving Fund and 1.94 mills for the 2017 and 2020 bonds. The district says the board lowered the levy to 10.06 mills this past summer after refinancing its outstanding bonds. It says the refinancing saved about $35 million in interest and moved the expected payoff 10 years earlier.
The district says neither proposal would raise the rate. Instead, they would keep the current rate in place longer. If neither passes, the district says the rate is scheduled to drop in 2033. Proposal 1 alone would push that drop to 2038, and Proposal 2 alone would push it to 2035. If both pass, the district says the 10.06-mill rate "is scheduled to continue through 2041," and possibly end sooner if interest rates improve.
The ballot language itself estimates the new debt at 2.64 mills in the first year for Proposal 1 and 1.41 mills for Proposal 2, with averages of 3.59 and 1.55 mills a year over a repayment period of up to 30 years, Mosaic West Michigan reported. Those figures are estimates, not guarantees.
A mill is $1 for every $1,000 of taxable value. Your taxable value is printed on your property tax notice and is often well below half the market value.
The district calls both proposals a "zero millage increase," and that's accurate: neither one raises today's rate. But "no increase" isn't the same as "no cost."
Allendale property owners pay 10.06 mills a year toward school debt. That debt is scheduled to be paid down, and the district projects the rate will start falling in 2033 if voters approve nothing new.
So the choice on Nov. 3 isn't between today's tax bill and a higher one. It's between today's rate continuing for more years and a rate that starts to drop sooner.
Put plainly, a no vote doesn't lower anyone's tax bill next year, but it does lower it sooner. A yes vote keeps the bill where it is for up to eight more years in exchange for $93.7 million in buildings and upgrades.
For a home with a $150,000 taxable value, 10.06 mills works out to about $1,509 a year. That's the bill that would continue under a yes, or that would begin to shrink after 2033 under a no.
Supporters say a growing district needs the space now, and that the refinance savings make it possible without raising the rate. Skeptics could argue that voters were already set to see relief, and that "no increase" undersells the cost of keeping a tax in place longer.
Treasury records show an $88.27 million bond lost in August 2024, 2,049 to 2,206. An $88.135 million request lost in May 2025, 1,661 to 2,392.
"So the first time it failed by … less than 150 votes," Superintendent Garth Cooper told WOOD TV. "Last time it was closer to 700."
Cooper told WOOD TV that a community steering committee recommended separating the multipurpose building from the rest. "People are still seeing it as an athletics only, which isn't the true sole only purpose of that building," he said. "But listening to the community, what we decided to do, the committee decided to do, was to separate it out from the main proposal."
He also pointed to growth: "We're a growing community. We need to create more space at the early grades, but we also need to create more spaces at the high school."
District budget documents show taxable value in Allendale grew an average of 7.5% a year over the decade ending in 2023.
Cover photo: Courtesy Allendale Public Schools.
Sources: Michigan Department of Treasury school bond election records; Allendale Public Schools bond information and FAQ; WOOD TV; WGVU; Mosaic West Michigan; Allendale Public Schools Board of Education minutes (June 12, 2023) and 2023 Truth in Taxation budget documents.
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