Dearborn voters approve largest school bond in Michigan history

Dearborn voters have given the green light to the largest school bond in Michigan history. We're talking about $1.5 billion. It's a plan that will fund two decades of construction and renovations with the goal of transforming every school district in every school in the district. Let's get live to Fox News. Dave Spencer. He's in Dearborn with what happens next. Hey, Dave. Hey, Rup. Yeah, the voters have spoken clearly at this one when they went to the polls on Tuesday and approved this $1.5 billion bond proposal, money that will be spent on schools throughout the district, including creating six new schools in a span of 20 years. So they're going to roll this out in phases. And we wanted to take a look at kind of what the issue is. And we were let inside some of the old schools to see it for ourselves on what condition they're in. So they were taken to Henry Ford Elementary School, which is a Which itself, portions of the building are over 100 years old. And we got to see firsthand on why these improvements are so badly needed. They took us down into the basement of the school where we saw kind of the boiler room. Where there were three boilers there, only one of them working. And this is something that needs constant maintenance. You can see kind of the deterioration of the room itself. The boiler, not very efficient in terms of saving money. So all of this is going to is the reason why they've kind of of approve these upgrades that will start happening over the summer here when construction phases begin. And they're going to start doing to all the schools, they're going to renovate all the bathrooms, making sure that they're more private for the students. They're also going to upgrade security measures within the schools. And then they're going to start construction on three new schools immediately. And then over the span of 20 years, work to incrementally fund more and do more improvements. And you're going to see a lot of construction around here. I had a chance to speak with the head of the teachers union along with the mayor on why this is needed and why the voters ultimately decided to approve it. When you come to work and you're not greeted by a line of cockroaches like I used to be at Laurie Middle School, it's going to change your perspective. So teachers are going to be more happy coming to work and also the fact that they can do their jobs with their students without worrying about paint falling from the ceiling It's really bad in some of our buildings. We have some newer buildings, but some of our older buildings, it's really rough. We worked very closely with the school district for the last two years to ensure that the $1.5 billion actually does not increase taxes for residential homeowners. And so there are sacrifices that are being made in the city and the school side to ensure that taxes stay flat for residential homeowners in Dearborn. I think that was what was most important. Secondly, it'll be 20 years of construction with each five-year phase, But delivering into ensuring that every single school across the whole The whole district will see a level of investment that is unprecedented, in addition to several schools being reconstructed across the city. Yeah, you heard the mayor there mention the fact that those tax bills aren't going to go up for the homeowners in here. That's because they're getting creative in ways of spreading around city services to make sure that a lot of it is allocated towards funding these school projects and then spreading it out over the course of 20 years makes it a little bit more palatable and ultimately why 68% of the voters here in Dearborn got on board with this proposal. Reporting live in Dearborn, Dave Spencer, Fox 2 News. Yeah, the lack of cost is an important factor. But if you look across the board in Metro Detroit, so many people approved some of these similar measures, including the museum proposal, the millages, and other things to make sure they're investing back in their communities. Yeah, it shows you how important, especially education. When you decide where you live, typically education, the schools, is top of the list. So they had that in mind here in Dearborn. Our Dave Spencer for us live tonight. Dave, thank you.