Court Opinion

ID: 9563496
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:40:23.790579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:52.651769
License: Public Domain

Hunter, J.
(dissenting)—Under Const, art. 8, § 6 (amendment 27), school district funds can only be used for school district purposes.
'In the instant case the $915,000 in funds realized from the sale of $1,066,000 in general obligation bonds of the Moses Lake School District were to be used under the Education Act, Laws of 1945, ch. 115, providing for an extension of high schools to the 13th and 14th grades, and by the Community College Act, Laws of 1961, ch. 198, amending the 1945 enactment authorizing school districts to establish and operate community colleges in these two grades with the approval of the State Board of Education.
With state matching funds the South Campus of the Big Bend Community College was purchased, the college buildings were constructed and equipped by 1963, and operated *564by the Moses Lake School District until April 3, 1967, the effective date of the Community College Act, RCW 28B.50. RCW 28B.50.300, which is now being challenged, provides for the transfer of certain property of the school districts to the community colleges without compensation for said property.
The 1967 Act changed the purpose of the use of funds realized from the 1961 bond issue voted by the district. The South Campus of Big Bend Community College was no longer an extension of the Moses Lake high school system to the 13th and 14th grades as a part of the common school system. The language of the act stating the purpose (RCW 28B.50.020 (5)) states inter alia:
[Independent, unique, and vital section of our state’s higher education system, separate from both the common school system and other institutions of higher learning
(Italics mine.) Moreover, the 1967 Act removed the operation of the South Campus of Big Bend Community College from the Moses Lake School District to the State Board of Community Colleges.
It is highly probable that the bond election would have failed had the voters of the Moses Lake School District known of this change of purpose at the time of the bond election that the funds would not be used for an extension of the Moses Lake schools to the 13th and 14th grades as a part of the common school system; that the school so funded would not be operated by their own school directors, but by others who were in no way responsible to them for the management and operation of the college; 'and that the State Board of Community Colleges could even move the South Campus of the Big Bend Community College to some other location, leaving them holding the.sack to pay off the bonds for the next 14 years, the remainder of the 20-year obligation.
The 1967 Community College Act has clearly thwarted the purposes for which the people of the Moses Lake School District thought these funds were to be used, which *565not only violates Const, art. 8, § 6 (amendment 27), prohibiting the expenditure of school district funds for other than school district purposes, but it also amounts to a taking of property from the taxpayers of the Moses Lake School District without due process of law in violation of the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, and Const, art. 1, § 3.
The State Board of Community Colleges should be required to reimburse the Moses Lake School District the amount of its investment in the South Campus and relieve the taxpayers of the district from the burden of paying off the bonds originally in the amount of $1,066,000 for the remainder of the 20 years, funding a purpose for which they never intended.
Rosellini, J., concurs with Hunter, J.
Petition for rehearing denied January 17, 1973.