Mount Clemens seeks $91.8 million school bond

Tax reduction tied to May vote

By: Dean Vaglia | Mount Clemens-Clinton-Harrison Journal | Published January 30, 2025

 The planetarium at Mount Clemens Secondary Complex is one part of the campus targeted for improvements should a $91.8 million bond proposal and millage reduction be approved by voters on May 6. Other projects funded by the bond include building a middle school at the complex and upgrading career-technical education classrooms.

The planetarium at Mount Clemens Secondary Complex is one part of the campus targeted for improvements should a $91.8 million bond proposal and millage reduction be approved by voters on May 6. Other projects funded by the bond include building a middle school at the complex and upgrading career-technical education classrooms.

Photo by Dean Vaglia

MOUNT CLEMENS — Capital improvements and a tax reduction? It is what the leadership of Mount Clemens Community Schools believes is possible.

The school district is hoping voters approve a nearly $92 million bond and millage reduction proposal, based on language approved by the district’s school board on Jan. 22. Voters in the district will decide whether it shall borrow up to $91.82 million for renovations, improvements and expansions to the secondary school campus including security improvements, technology upgrades and the creation of a new middle-school-focused building on the campus.

“One of the things that, in addition to revitalizing and restoring the historical side of the (secondary) building — it’s over 100 years old now — one of the pieces of feedback that we’ve gotten from the community is that it has been a challenge for some people to send their kids here had been the merging of high school and middle school in the same building,” Mount Clemens Community Schools Superintendent Julian Roper said. “One of the things we want to do is have a separate instructional academic side to this campus for middle school; a separate entrance than the high school, really identifying those specific environments.”

According to Roper, the plan calls for building the middle school on the southern part of the secondary school campus. The middle school will inherit the complex’s existing gymnasium, while a new gym will be built for the high school.

Upgrades to classroom technology aim to support the further development of career-technical education classes.

“One of the things that this community is really vested in is making sure we have those career opportunities for kids in addition to college,” Roper said. “Just making sure we have spaces that are conducive to adding CTE programs and making sure they’re flexible to adding programs that we don’t even know exist yet.”

Current CTE and CTE-adjacent programs include HVAC, broadcasting and culinary arts classes. What Roper and Rickman envision adding are courses focusing on more technical subjects, such as cybersecurity, but that vision requires building and outfitting spaces that can support those programs and keep up with the industry.

“There’s so many things out there that we can look into providing, but we have to have buildings that can accommodate those types of learning environments,” said Earl Rickman, president of the Mount Clemens Community Schools Board of Education.

The high school’s planetarium, a domed structure located around the middle of the campus, is targeted for refurbishment as well.

Tied to the bond vote is a millage reduction, which would see the district’s tax rate of 11.8 mills reduced to 10.8 mill.

One mill is equal to $1,000 of a taxed property’s value.

District officials worked with Plante Moran Realpoint and Partners in Architecture to develop the bond amount, while the millage reduction speaks to what Roper describes as a history of overtaxing in Mount Clemens.

“This community historically feels overtaxed, so we knew that asking for more money would probably not be supported as a tax burden,” Roper said. “(After) the conversations that we have been having with the community and the stakeholders in the community around a decrease, I knew that had to be one of the stipulations.”

District officials say this millage reduction will not affect the ability to pay for operations and debts.

The decision to pursue a bond vote was made not long after Roper began his role as superintendent in June 2023, though the idea had been bounced around the district for years before then.

“It’s been kicked around for years but the climate wasn’t right,” Rickman said. “We just weren’t in a good place to believe that we had a product that the community would support. One of the assignments Mr. Roper made when he first came in was to do some things, and one of them was to look at the feasibility of having a bond.”

The move comes on the heels of two surrounding districts, L’Anse Creuse Public Schools and Chippewa Valley Schools, respectively having a $188.7 million bond approved and a non-homestead operating millage renewed by voters. The last time the L’Anse Creuse district went for a bond was in 2005. Mount Clemens has not attempted a bond vote since 2001, when voters approved $71.5 million.

With only so much time between now and May 6, district officials expect to put in “a lot of work” promoting the bond to district residents and stakeholders through meetings and conversations.

“We have to build (trust), which we have been doing,” Roper said. “Building trust by being out and being transparent with them. There’s going to be a lot of work. A lot of getting out in front of people at community meetings, being at different places to have those conversations and just being transparent with folks.”

Though Roper feels confident the community’s trust can be earned by May 6 — jokingly asserting “there is no plan B” — it is in those conversations where the district will find its answer if voters do not approve the bond.

“We will listen to them and make an informed decision,” Roper said. “If they say ‘no’ then we’ll find out why and come back to the table and try to do it again. This community, these kids and the taxpayers of this community deserve to have quality facilities, quality structure in the community that our kids can go to, to be able to compete with our local surrounding school districts.”

The idea of the bond failing on debut is not entirely out of the question. The bond approved in the L’Anse Creuse district in 2024 only came after an initial $330 million bond failed. Revisions to that bond resulted in the final $188.7 million proposal.


Bond language
Shall the Mount Clemens Community School District, Macomb County, Michigan, borrow the sum of not to exceed Ninety One Million Eight Hundred and Twenty Thousand Dollars ($91,820,000) and issue its unlimited tax general obligation bonds therefor, for the purpose of defraying all or part of the cost of:

Erecting additions to the secondary complex; remodeling, equipping and reequipping school buildings, including structures and athletic fields, or parts of or additions to those facilities, including renovations to restore and revitalize the historical high school building and to create separate high school and junior high school learning environments with secure entrance vestibules; furnishing or refurnishing new or remodeled school buildings; preparing, developing, and improving sites, or parts of sites, for school buildings, including structures, athletic fields, and parking lots; and acquiring, installing, and equipping or reequipping school buildings for technology.