ALPENA — In March, voters will decide the fate of a multimillion-dollar bond proposal after the Alpena Public Schools Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to call for an election.

Board members decided to ask voters to approve the sale of $33.9 million in bonds. Those would be repaid over 25 years.

The election is March 10.

Money raised through the bond sale would be used for facilities repairs and renovations throughout the district, such as boilers, roofs, and security at the schools.

District officials do not expect taxes to increase if the bond sale is approved, but a future tax reduction would be postponed.

Property owners are still paying off the district’s previous bond sale from 1996, putting 1.8 mills — about $90 a year for the owner of a $100,000 house — toward that debt this year. If the bond sale is approved in March, the district expects to keep taxes the same and put some of the taxes toward the old bonds and some toward the new bonds.

The remaining $4.4 million of the district’s current bond debt is scheduled to be paid off in 2021. After that, the full 1.8 mills would be used to pay the new bond debt.

If the bonds are rejected, that property tax would go away.

Superintendent John VanWagoner said the new bonds would not take care of everything for the next 25 years, but would take care of large items that are old and need to be replaced.

“We’ve had boilers shutting down in multiple buildings, we have leaks, we have roofs caving in,” VanWagoner said. “You have roofs that are 30 years old, boilers that are 50 years old, and it really concentrates on those major items, and then, hopefully, with dollars that we do get from the state, we can try to gear toward the small things that we can do to knock out those smaller things.”

Board Trustee Stacey Parr said the proposal is the aftermath of the district’s first bond proposal.

Voters rejected a $63 million bond proposal in May that would have been used to build a new Ella White Elementary School and make significant remodels and safety improvements to Alpena High School and other renovations at all school buildings. That proposal would have raised taxes by an estimated 1.9 mills this year.

“I’m comfortable that we have met the criteria as best as we can and really tried to listen to what the community will hopefully support versus the last time,” Parr said.

Board Trustee Ned Heath said that, if people want to move to the area, the schools should be in good shape.

“We have thousands of kids in this community,” Heath said. “It’s a great place to raise a family. If we don’t continue to provide a good place for education, then families will not want to come here.”

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.

In other business

The Alpena Public Schools Board of Education on Monday also:

∫ heard that Sara Hightower and Rachel Leckrone were hired as instructional assistants at Alpena High School and Lauri Fairchild was hired as an instructional assistant at Wilson Elementary School, while Tonya Geister resigned as an instructional assistant at the high school.