Voters approved an $18.3 million Suttons Bay Public Schools bond proposal intended in part to “rightsize” the district by removing unused space.

In unofficial results reported by the Leelanau County Clerk’s office late Tuesday, the proposal passed by a comfortable 776 to 628 margin.

“The voters in our district, our families, they never let us down,” Superintendent Casey Petz tells The Ticker. “They have been engaged in the process, and in a lot of ways the result is not surprising because we know our families are all in on the district and have always stepped up to the plate. We’re very thankful.”

Petz is especially grateful considering the recent fate of school proposals in the county.

“If you look at the last couple of cycles, the returns have not been really all that positive for a lot of the bond proposals that have been on the ballot, so it certainly gives a school district pause to have a multi-million dollar proposal out there,” he says. “People have a lot of opinions... and we know the average person is struggling.”

At least part of the bond proposal’s success can be tied to the fact that it was carefully researched and only asking for true needs, Petz believes. It was a “practical and reasonable ask” for district voters.

“It’s based on practicality and logic. If it doesn’t pass the eye test that the average voter has, they start to push back on it. And our voters, people I spoke to in the district and our families, they said don't overreach. Don't go for things that the district doesn't need,” he says. “Keep it about needs, keep it about safety, keep it about security, make sure that your infrastructure and energy management is being addressed.”

At least half of the money approved by voters will go toward replacing or upgrading boilers, roofs, windows and other key infrastructure, along with improving security and building a new all-purpose gym to better serve students.

But the remainder will go toward removing a large chunk of the campus’ dated north end, which now sits empty and unused in a district that has roughly half the students (600) it had just 20 years ago.

The bond will allow the district to direct more money towards students instead of empty space, Petz says.

“If you look at aging infrastructure and the amount of money that you pour into it, and that could be energy management systems, boilers, roofs, lack of insulation, (it’s a lot), especially with buildings that are vacant,” Petz says. “When you take those things offline, or update them and modernize them to more energy efficient systems, you can reallocate those dollars directly to classrooms. And that is a significant, positive thing for our students in Suttons Bay.”

The need to “rightsize” the district by removing unused space has been discussed for several years. Those discussions culminated last year in a detailed facilities needs assessment completed by a private firm and two community forums to discuss a plan going forward.

The plan calls to remove the old middle school north wing and existing middle school gymnasium, both on the north end of the north building, which houses the district’s middle and elementary school. The new replacement gym is expected to be more energy efficient and require far less maintenance over the long run, Petz says.

Elsewhere in Leelanau County, voters overwhelmingly approved a Leland Public Schools operating millage. Results for the Grand Traverse Band's election were not immediately available.