By Ansel Carpenter

On Tuesday, Feb. 7 Santa Fe voters turned out to vote in a mill levy election. As the paper noted in an article before the election, the mill levy is a special property tax rate that can be given. As applied to ATC, the election will give ATC $317,697 in additional money.

3,844 voted in the election, 2,893 people voted yes, 951 voted no.

By state law, employees of schools or districts cannot ask people to vote a certain way in the election. Instead, the ATC and the Santa Fe Public Schools (SFPS) have urged people in the community to simply vote, while telling them all of the positive change that would come if the mill levy passed.

This election takes place every six years. However, this is the first year in which ATC will receive funds from it.

Although voter turnout was low on the 7th, many members of the ATC community voted.

SFPS Superintendent Bobby Gutierrez said in a statement on the SFPS website “I am very grateful to our community for supporting our schools with this very important election.” She went on to say that “Approval of the 2-mill levy will allow us to continue to properly maintain our facilities, make some very significant technology upgrades, replace our worn-out activity buses, and allow each site to have some funds for furniture, equipment, technology and projects specific to individual school communities.”

The money from this mill levy can only be allocated for certain things. The main use that is barred by law is operations budget. This budget includes teachers’ salaries. The funds can be used for expenses such as facility restoration and improvement, security, technology and musical and athletic equipment.