• Polling showed a majority of district voters would favor adding a little under $10 a month on average to their property tax bills to support schools.
• The district had heard positive comments about its recent changes, including all-day kindergarten, a switch to K-5 elementary schools and the creation of dual-language and science-technology-engineering-and-math magnet schools. And enrollment had started increasing.
• A group was formed to promote the referendum, and there was no evidence of organized opposition.

So why did the referendum, which would have added $2 million a year to the school budget for 10 years and avoided possible teacher layoffs, fail? And why did one of two incumbents, School Board Chairman Peter Toensing, lose his seat?

School officials have spent the days after the election trying to sort it out. 

No single factor

School Superintendent Robert Slotterback said this week the narrow loss -- 2,419 votes to 2,167 -- couldn't be attributed to a single cause. But, he said, the economy was probably a factor.

"There are a couple things, I think, I realized after the fact," Slotterback said. "I think I'm much more sensitive to how many people there are in Richfield that are living right on the edge, either seniors with small fixed incomes, people that maybe had their jobs downsized and are working for minimum wage or people who are unemployed. And so any type of increase is very difficult for them."

John Ashmead, one of the two newcomers elected to the school board, saw the same thing.

"Times are tough and consumer prices keep going up--gas and food for example," he wrote in an email. "Several people told me that they wanted to vote yes, but just didn't have the funds to cover the increase in cost the referendum would have required."

Slotterback said he thinks several other factors affected the outcome.

• "We ran a real low-key campaign," he said, "and I think next time we're going to have to be much more vocal and make a lot more connections out there in the community."
• The wording on the ballot, especially the language about how much more the district was asking, was confusing to voters.
• A property tax change approved during the last legislative session that will raise property taxes across the state had an effect on voters.
• The nature of a property tax referendum: "What is the only single tax that people can vote on?" Slotterback asked. "When they're in a situation where they maybe are fed up with taxes increasing, how are they going to vote?"
• Asking to simply renew the current levy would probably have been successful, given the 70 percent rate of voter approval on school levy renewals around the state this fall, but the district decided to take a chance on asking for more money because current funding levels will mean more budget cuts.

"We do have a big issue now," Slotterback said. "This levy that we just voted upon expires at the end of next year, so we're going to have to decide real quickly whether or not we're going to go back and ask for a renewal of that levy."

Slotterback pointed out that the top five candidates in the election, who all strongly supported the referendum, drew more votes as a group than the bottom 10 candidates, two of whom opposed the higher levy.

Low-key campaigns

The campaigns for the board seats also seemed to be particularly low key, maybe because contested races for school board have been a rarity in Richfield.

Top vote getters Ashmead and Etienne were two of the few candidates who purchased and deployed law signs around the city.

Only four candidates were the subject of letters to the editor in the local paper newspaper, the Richfield Sun-Current, and Ashmead and Etienne were the only candidates for whom more than one letter was published.

Board Chairman Toensing said he spent most of his campaign time working to get a "yes" vote on the referendum and not on his own campaign.

"I feel bad for Pete because he did a good job as a board member and put a lot of time into organizing the referendum and at the very end promoting it," John Ashmead wrote. "This took away from his ability to campaign for himself which hurt his chances."