Tahoma Levies Currently Failing
by Jenn Askew
The EP&O and Technology levies for the Tahoma School District are currently failing. The EP&O levy (the big one) is trailing by ~6.3% with 460 votes between No and Yes, while the tech levy is trailing by ~2.5% with 181 votes:
There are still many votes outstanding – one of our members turned in their ballot on Thursday, and only had the ballot tracker catch up around 8:30pm tonight – so we’ll keep an eye on this. In 2020, the Yes votes gained about 4-5 percentage points total between election night and the final count. In our experience, late ballots in this area tend to be more favorable of progressive ideals, including public education. Whether this lean is enough to save these levies is impossible to say right now.
What Will Happen if These Fail?
We can’t speak for the district, but we do know what happened before. In 2018 the district ran three levies in February: EP&O, Technology, and a third for buses and transportation. All three levies failed. That next April, the district ran just one, two-year levy – the EP&O, which was the largest of the three. That time it passed, but the district went two years without a tech levy. (In 2020, just a month before the pandemic closed schools, our community passed both an EP&O and a Tech levy.) If these levies both fail, it’s possible the district will run one or both of them again.
If the levies fail a second time… I honestly don’t think any of us at Tahoma Values wants to consider that right now. Frankly, it’s too depressing. A second failure would cause irreparable harm to our district and community. We are well aware that there are those in our community who would rejoice at that prospect, but we are not amongst them.
Is This Part of a Trend or More Local?
The TSD levies are some of a very small handful around the state that are losing on the ballot tonight, but we do have a neighbor with a close vote. That is the Auburn School District, whose EP&O levy is currently losing by 32 votes. There was an 8:50pm update on that race, likely from the Pierce County portion of the district. The original count presented a loss of ~2%.
February 14th Update
Very few ballots were counted today, with only another ~130 added to the totals. The Tech levy is still losing, though now by 164 votes (vs 181 yesterday), and the EP&O is still losing, now with 441 votes (vs 460 yesterday).
February 15th Update
One of the Tahoma levies is now winning, with another 1400 ballots counted. Tech is now WINNING by 64 votes (vs losing by 164 yesterday), and the EP&O is still losing by 232 votes (vs 460 yesterday). There could be another large drop tomorrow, but after that the numbers are unlikely to change substantially. We’ll continue watching this. The school board is holding a work study tonight, to discuss options going forward and cuts that will need to be made immediately.
Also of note, the Auburn results today were worse, and that levy is now failing again. Correction: I was only looking at the King County data. Auburn is in both Pierce and King counties. Their levy is currently passing with 113 votes.
This article was written by a member of Tahoma Values with help from the rest of the team, and we are always looking for new article submissions! If there’s something you’d like to publish with us, send your submission to tahomavalues@gmail.com
