Board members can gather and provide “factual information” to voters, but cheerleading for a ballot issue must be left to an independent political action committee. “It’s a fine line,” he said.
Strategic Visioning in Dayton is only the latest consultant to be hired to help gauge the opinions of voters in the Springboro Community City Schools.
Two years ago, School Toolbox, a firm headed by then-Oakwood school board Vice President Debra Hershey, was paid more than $13,000 by the district and the citizen committee to promote two levies on the March 2008 ballot.
The levy committee paid for campaign work, while the district paid Hershey for a community newsletter, in recognition of the law barring use of public funds to promote political issues.
In the election, voters approved a renewal, but rejected an emergency levy for new operating funds for the first of four times. Now the board has tapped Diane Lawrence’s Strategic Visioning firm to poll voters on what level of services they want provided to Springboro students as the district heads toward 2012 — when it is projected to fall back into the red, unless a levy is passed or more cuts are made.
“As I tell my clients, you’re always building towards that levy,” Lawrence said. “You’re not always in campaign mode; but it’s just like any business, you want to build a relationship with your constituents.”
Boards depend on consultants
The Springboro district is hardly alone among taxpayer-supported organizations that turn to private consultants for help in measuring public opinion and testing the waters for future levy campaigns. Strategic Visioning’s client list ranges from Miami Valley Hospital to Five Rivers MetroParks to the Beavercreek City Schools.
Peg Arnold, Beavercreek school board president, said consulting firms are often an essential piece of a district’s tax campaign. Locally elected officials usually do not have the political savvy it takes to implement a successful levy campaign. They cannot also do so without the right guidance and information. “How are we supposed to get that kind of knowledge?” Arnold said. She added that hiring consultants and public relations firms are often cheaper than employing a full-time staff member for those duties.
Other examples of school districts hiring consultants range from the 18-month, $108,000 contract signed in January 2009 between the Dayton Public Schools and Cleveland-based Burges and Burges for for image-polishing and other public relations work to the $13,300 the Springboro district is expected to pay Strategic Visioning to conduct a public-opinion survey.
On Tuesday, March 23, the Springboro board appropriated up to $39,500 to pay for the survey and focus groups.
“It’s critically important in this day and age that school districts have a clear sense of where they stand with their public,” said Steve Avakian, who estimated his firm, Avakian and Associates in Dayton, has worked publicly and behind the scenes for hundreds of districts and other taxpayer-supported organizations.
Xenia being sued for hiring consultant
In the mid-1990s, Avakian said he was paid by an architect, who was hired to build schools in Springboro with a $60 million bond issue passed after several rejections.
Polling helped pro-levy forces shape the campaign around an issue the silent majority of voters would accept. “If you didn’t have that, the shouters would always prevail,” Avakian said.
In Xenia, Avakian’s firm and the City Council are being sued by Virgil Vaduva, who not only accuses the city of misusing taxpayer dollars to support a tax hike, but of using “fraudulent actions” to build support for the increase. A trial date has not been set.Avakian predicts Vaduva’s lawsuit might suggest a trend as anti-tax groups work to defeat levy campaigns. Vaduva, who is also a candidate in the Republican primary for Greene County commissioner, has said he identified with the anti-tax increase Tea Party groups.
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