A Judge Tells Seattle's School Board It Can't Raid the Building Fund to Pay Old Debts
Judge Langley rules that the $35,000 levied for new schools must build new schools — and Queen Anne parents, whose children sit in an 'open, barn-like' schoolhouse, suddenly see a six-room building within reach.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The demurrers of J. W. Clise and others to the answers of the board of education and the county treasurer were sustained by Judge Langley in the superior court yesterday. The plaintiffs sought to require that the money levied for new buildings be applied to that purpose and to nothing else.
The board had levied a tax for one year's expenses, including the sum of $35,000 estimated and levied for 'new buildings' in 1894. It appeared that the board had been applying money raised for the support of the schools — and for the purchase of school sites and the erection of school houses — toward the payment of deficiency warrants issued in former years.
Judge Langley held that the levy, by its own force and operation, appropriated so much of the taxes of that year to that specific object and no other. 'The board did not appropriate the money; it only expressed its wants in a lawful manner, and the law made the appropriation,' he wrote. 'If the board did not intend to use the $35,000 for new buildings, why ask it of the people? Or, having received it, why withhold it from the use to which the law appropriated it?'
Annual estimates, he said, do not look backward for objects upon which to bestow the revenues of a given year; to divert them to the demands of other years 'would be a clear misapplication of the district funds.' The statutes provide for the funding of outstanding warrants and prior indebtedness; if those provisions are insufficient, 'the legislature alone can enlarge them.'
Charles F. Fishback, who represented the plaintiff, said the decision was particularly important because many teachers had been under the impression that their warrants could not legally be paid until the district's old debt had been entirely wiped out. Under the ruling, the money raised for teachers' salaries is a separate fund and must be applied to that purpose; any diversion of funds raised for one purpose to another is 'a fraud upon the taxpayers.'
H. R. Clise, of the Queen Anne Hill district, said the neighborhood would now renew its demand for a building. 'A site has already been selected and all we want now is a six-room building, so constructed that it can be enlarged when the needs of the district demand,' he said. 'The building we have now is an open, barn-like affair and not a safe place for children to go. In this district there are over 200 children between the ages of 6 and 13 years, and the parents of many will not permit them to attend the school because of its open, unhealthful condition.'
A special meeting of the board of education was held yesterday afternoon. After a brief discussion it was resolved to instruct the attorneys for the board to refrain from taking an appeal until further instructed by the board. W. H. White, of White & Munday, appeared for the board.
“If the board did not intend to use the $35,000 for new buildings, why ask it of the people? Or, having received it, why withhold it from the use to which the law appropriated it?”
The fight is a familiar one: a school district deep in old debt, a dedicated building levy, and officials quietly using capital money to cover yesterday's bills. Seattle still argues over levies, school capacity and where the next building goes — and Queen Anne parents still show up to demand classrooms.
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