MONROE — Litigation between a group of taxpayers and the School District of Monroe continued April 28 in front of Green County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Vale. The hearing was livestreamed, but no recording devices were allowed inside the courtroom.
At the heart of the case is an $88 million referendum the district passed through the Nov. 2022 midterm election, which sets aside a small amount of money to update Abraham Lincoln Elementary school, with the bulk of the funds going toward building a new high school at a new location. After the referendum passed, new tax amounts were published, and the burden on taxpayers was higher than projected in the leadup to the election, causing ire among many taxpayers.
Months later, a lawsuit against the district was filed by a group of four taxpayers hoping to void the election result. An oral ruling is expected to be made by Vale at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, May 3, which will also be livestreamed.
On April 28, the two sides made oral arguments in front of Vale, with attorney Anthony Coletti representing the plaintiffs, which include Dale Howarth, Larry Koschkee, Merlyn Gordee and Catherine Kuckuk. The school district and Monroe Board of Education are represented by Sarah Zylstra, Douglas Witte and Jean-Louis Tanner. Zylstra took the lead of the defense in the verbal arguments.
Coletti went first, laying out the case for his clients. The plaintiffs are asking for a permanent ruling to nullify the passing of the $88 million Nov. 2022 referendum, which would be the first case of its kind in the state. Coletti referred multiple times to the McNally vs. Tollander case that was decided in 1980.
In that case, a 1976 referendum was proposed to move the county seat in Burnett County from Grantsburg to Siren. However, in eight municipalities about 2,600 (40%) of voters in the county were disenfranchised when clerks withheld ballots from eight municipalities at the direction of the county clerk. That referendum passed 3,257-588 (a difference of 2,669), but trial court ruled to overturn the election. It later went through the court of appeals and was reversed. Siren is still the county seat of Burnett County today.
Vale asked Coletti if the outcome here would have been altered. Kuckuk, who lives on a fixed income, claimed in her affidavit that she voted to pass the referendum, but would not again, now knowing the full burden. The other three plaintiffs all voted no, per their affidavits.
Coletti brought up how Howarth’s taxes increased more than $670 per year, about $280 more than expected. He also argued about the district’s stated 13-cent per $1,000 increase in the mill rate and the overall cost to taxpayers. If the district and school board could not have predicted the cost accurately, they should not have stated it in communications, he argued.
The district knew, but picked and chose what information to disperse, said Coletti. “The levy rate went up, but that’s only one part of the equation. The overall representation was false, even if the numbers are correct,” he said.
Zylstra argued back that a state school business officer described in an affidavit that for a referendum, advertising the mill rate being based on year-to-year terms of a $100,000 home is common practice across the state. “The plaintiffs seem to agree that it is common practice,” Zylstra said.
Zylstra responded that the 13-cent mill rate was in fact mathematically accurate, and that the argument on Howarth’s tax increase was looking at his total tax bill, and not the school district’s portion. Howarth’s tax bill increased $445.52 dollars, about $235 less than the plaintiff’s claim.
Another claim Coletti made was that the case could be viewed as voter fraud. He called it a “concerted public relations campaign” by Monroe Superintendent Rodney Figueroa, Business Manager Ron Olson, the school board and the private “Say Yes” committee. He said his client’s votes were “watered down” because of the high turnout of votes during the major midterm state election cycle.
Kuckuk, he said, only voted to pass that referendum after speaking with Figueroa and Olson, saying they convinced her about the 13-cent increase. “We have a person here who felt misled and voted differently. Ms. Kuckuk went right to Mr. Olson and Mr. Figueroa and was told wrong information that led to her changing her vote,” Coletti said. “Her vote was taken from her. That’s fraud. That’s wrong.”
However, Zylstra said Kuckuk was possibly struggling with the timeline in her memory, as Kuckuk told defense attorneys that she heard the 13-cent piece of information during one of the district’s tours of Monroe High School, which came weeks prior to news of the 13-cent mill rate increase.
“Mr. Coletti focuses on Ms. Kuckuk, saying she had her vote taken from her, but she voted,” Zylstra said. Her memory of the order of events may be incorrect, Zylstra said.
Coletti also referenced a conversation a separate witness claimed to have with Figueroa, who started with the district in 2022, in which the new administrator said he couldn’t explain the actual tax impact to the public, because the public couldn’t understand it. Instead, they chose to advertised the mill rate.
“The fix was in on this thing from the beginning,” Coletti said, adding the claim that the district, back in 2017, “stacked the deck with the people on the facilities committee” that found the issues in the district and determined that building a new high school was necessary.
Vale interjected, asking Coletti about the bias of the “Say Yes” committee, a citizens group, and if its composition was in question. Coletti said that Board President Rich Deprez “wasn’t on the (committee) board, but was more than aware of what was going out from that committee, and he approved it.”
Coletti added that the group, “Say ‘Yes’ to Monroe Schools”, had 38 district employees and four board members in the group, adding to the bias. “Members of that committee are available on that website,” Coletti said. A graphic posted on the groups Facebook page on Nov. 7, 2016 lists six of the nine school board members from 2022, though not all members were on the board at that time in 2016.
Vale went on to clarify that there is no rule to say a school district employee can’t be in a citizen group like that. Coletti admitted that it wasn’t against the law, but questioned ethics while making a comparison to corruption in major corporations, like when a CEO uses corporate funds for their own pleasure. The Monroe Board of Education is unpaid, something Zylstra reminded the courtroom in rebuttal.
“The plaintiffs have thrown around words like deceit, fraud, nefarious actions, and have said that the school board members are calculated liars. That’s untrue,” Zylstra said. “The school board is unpaid. These are public servants that don’t deserve the rhetoric being thrown around. And it’s just that — rhetoric — and not fact.”
Coletti also referenced the special meeting of the electors vote on land acquisition March 8 of this year. Vale had allowed the vote to take place, striking down the plaintiff’s efforts for a temporary injunction at that time. The land vote failed overwhelmingly, 945-578.
“We think the (Nov. 2022) vote would have been different. At the land vote, nearly 1,000 people came to vote, compared to the normally small amount. The public came out and said, ‘We’re not happy with this,’” Coletti said, adding that only 120 voted in the first land purchase attempt in December 2022. “While that vote itself was (specifically) on the land purchase, it was more like a referendum on the referendum.”
Zylstra countered, saying that the November election had 3,500 “no” votes, and that it was more than possible that the 950 votes at the land vote could have been many, if not all, of those same people. In the Nov. 2022 election, 6,862 votes were cast, and the referendum passed 3,741 to 3,121, a difference of about 9%.
Zylstra spend much of the early portion of her arguments bringing up case law, and why certain other rulings went the way that they did. She argued that there is no precedent to overturning a referendum like this, and the “ramifications would be cataclysmic” to districts across the state if the ruling went in that direction.
“The plaintiffs want this to create a road map for every district to be sued and every referendum to be overturned,” Zylstra said.
She argued that the school board and administrators passed on tax information to voters based on information and projections collected by Baird Financial. She said that ruling against the district could lead to the district defaulting on its loans, and cost millions in penalties and fees.
Vale adjourned around 11 a.m. after about two hours of arguments. Both parties said they want an oral ruling on the matter on May 3 because of timelines.