Issue 2 campaign leaders

Lundregan, Mueller say need is now

David Lundregan Bobbie Mueller

By KHALILA PERRIN

Two area residents have made building support for Issue 2 their primary goal between now and May 2.

Bobbie Mueller and David Lundregan co-chair the steering committee charged with promoting passage of the Hilliard school district's ballot issue, which combines a $75 million bond issue with a 2-mill permanent improvement levy.

The two district residents and their 35-member committee have already begun to campaign.

They're hoping to recruit more than 1,000 volunteers to reach voters before they hit the polls May 2, Mueller said. All will help spread the message spelled out in the campaign's theme: "Our Kids Can't Wait Anymore."

"This has gone on long enough," Mueller said of the district's overcrowded schools. "We need to fix this."

Lundregan echoed Mueller's sentiments.

"I really respect the way the schools have been able to deal with this, but like Bobbi said, enough is enough," he said.

Lundregan said he was recruited by Superintendent Dale McVey to lead the campaign, and he, in turn, recruited Mueller.

Lundregan, a Dublin resident, is the senior vice president and regional manager of for KeyBank McDonald Investments and treasurer-secretary of the Mid-Ohio FoodBank Board of Trustees. The 20-year resident and father of four has a fourth-grader and an eighth-grader enrolled in the district.

Over the past nine years, Mueller has served on parent-teacher organizations in several buildings. Now she is president of the Interschool PTO. The 10-year district resident is the mother of a Hilliard Darby freshman and a second-grader at J.W. Reason Elementary.

Following the district's three failed attempts to pass a bond issue in the last several years, both Mueller and Lundregan said they are hopeful yet realistic.

"This is going to be a tough campaign," said Mueller, but added, "I think it's a different plan this time."

A big part of the difference is the 114-acre site on Walker Road in Brown Township, where the district's third high school will be built if Issue 2 passes. The previous three bond issues sought funds to build a high school on Cosgray Road in the more congested northern part of the district.

If it passes, Issue 2 will also pay for construction of a new elementary school on Rings Road near Dublin's Ballantrae subdivision.

The high school and elementary school are expected to cost $65 million and $10 million, respectively, said district Treasurer Brian Wilson.

The Brown Township Board of Trustees hasn't backed down on its opposition to the Walker Road site.

The trustees, Gary Dever, Pam Sayre and Ron Williams, plan to issue a second formal statement against the location at Monday's school board meeting at Brown Elementary School, said Sayre. They read the first during the Feb. 13 board meeting.

In the latest letter, the three outline concerns about traffic congestion and land use.

"Inexperienced drivers, narrow roads, 55 miles per hour speed limits and slow-moving, large farm equipment: a recipe for disaster," the statement reads.

They end with a piece of advice for board members:

"Locate where the growth is, or in a growth area, and not in the middle of a farm field on the fringe of limited development in an environmentally sensitive area."