News Photo by Julie Riddle As Hillman Township Clerk Kelli Ableidinger, right, and election workers Aimee Smith, in black, and Shanna Firman look on, resident Chris Baranyai registers to vote at the Hillman Township Hall in Hillman on Tuesday.

HILLMAN – Hillman school officials will have to make do with old buildings after voters on Tuesday turned down a $22.1 million bond sale proposed by Hillman Community Schools.

More than 800 voters in six townships braved Tuesday’s rain to have their say in the decision that might have meant updated classrooms, more-secure school buildings, and a higher tax bill for residents.

According to unofficial results Tuesday, about 61% of voters voted against the bond sale, proposed to cover the cost of building and infrastructure improvements throughout the district.

Only residents from Hillman, Montmorency, Rust, Wellington, Green, and Bismarck townships who also live within the school district could vote. Fewer than five households in Bismarck Township were eligible to vote, and none did so, according to a township clerk.

Check out the interactive graphic below. Story continues below the graphic.

Election results — reported to The News by township clerks shortly after polling places closed at 8 p.m. on Tuesday — will go to the Montmorency County Clerk’s office on Wednesday. That office will prepare a preliminary report, which must get a thumbs-up from a county election board before becoming official.

The only item on Tuesday’s ballot, the bond proposal asked voters to allow Hillman Community Schools to sell $22.1 million in bonds to investors to fund improvements school officials call crucial for the district’s elementary school students.

School officials hoped to use money from the bond sale to add a wing to Hillman Junior-Senior High School to house elementary school classrooms.

The proposed nearly 40,000-square-foot addition would have offered modern-style learning spaces and room for an afterschool program, according to district officials.

Needed repairs to the existing, 60-year-old elementary school would cost more than building a new structure, district officials said.

Officials also hoped bond sales would fund campus security improvements, gym expansion, and the addition of a performance stage.

Taxpayers would have repaid the bonds over the next 30 years through an estimated 3.38-mill tax that would cost the owner of a $100,000 house about $169 a year. That rate, based on the yearly debt payment due and the total taxable value in the district, could have fluctuated from year to year.

Another, smaller millage to repay a previous school debt is set to expire this year.

A current 1-mill tax — costing the owner of a $100,000 house about $50 a year – does not raise enough money for the large-scale infrastructure projects the district wanted.

Interim Hillman Superintendent Pam Rader after Tuesday’s election said she and other district leaders will regroup, refocus, and “do the best we can with what we have.”

“I have no doubt we will meet the challenge that’s before us,” she said after township officials released election results, “because we do it every day.”

Without a bond sale, the district can’t afford the new construction school officials hoped to add to the district, and a survey early on in the planning process indicated the community doesn’t want the district to invest heavily in the old elementary building, Rader said.

Attributing the no-vote, at least in part, to challenging economic times, the interim superintendent said the district may pursue the addition again in a few years.

Until then, she said, “we’ll go to work, get creative, and do what’s best for the students.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.