Alpine Union School District has two open seats for its Board of Trustees, and Trustee Travis Lyon is seeking to keep his seat, running against Trustee Joseph Perricone, Erika Simmons, and Cee Gould. Lyon has sat on the board since 2016 and said he is running for reelection for the same reasons he did in 2016 and 2020.
“I have three kids enrolled in the Alpine school district, so I am intimately invested in the success of the school district,” he said. “I’ve lived in Alpine for 15 years. I was not born in Alpine, but I plan to die here. I care about the community. I have deep roots in the community. When my kids were going to be in kindergarten, I ran for office. I still have kids in the district, and I believe it is a valuable service for me. I am active in Alpine. I am the Alpine Community Planning Group chair. I do Little League, and these are different types of services to the community. Being on the school board is something a care about.”
Lyon said school board elections are important, but one of his main reasons for running for reelection, is the district’s $6.3 million Measure U bond to make critical renovations and improvements to schools and classrooms throughout the district.
“It is a general obligation bond, which means it will be put on the property taxes of Alpine residents. It is a bond for us to make capital improvements and address different maintenances on our campuses. The way I explain it is that if you own property, from time to time, you must make capital improvements, or the deferred maintenance comes at a higher cost later. Right now, we have air conditioners that are nearing their use of life, roofs that need repairs, and we need energy efficient windows. Making these capital improvements are going to reduce our costs in the long run. The unique portion of the bond, generally how they calculate the amount you can borrow, is by how much you can pay. Our bond, we are going to pay back in six years. We are borrowing way less than we could. The fiscally responsible approach is to borrow what you need and pay it back in six years. We are going to replace air conditioners, windows, and roofs that will last for the next 30 years, and pay it back in six. Instead of my grandkids paying for fixes on the properties, we are minimizing the interest to about 25% of what a normal bond would be in interest.”
Lyon said another thing is that Alpine taxpayers have been paying on a handful of bonds from the Grossmont Union High School District, Grossmont- Cuyamaca College District, and the last time the Alpine school district asked for a bond, it was to build Joan MacQueen Middle School. Those bonds costs about $60 per $100,000 evaluation and those bonds are dropping off the tax evaluations this year. “This bond would be half of that. This bond will not increase Alpine residents’ taxes much. Their property taxes will go down. Most people in Alpine are frustrated with school bonds because they felt they were not properly rewarded by bonds at the GUHSD. Grossmont passed three bonds, and Alpine felt it had been promised a high school in those bonds. And it never happened. This bond is different. Alpine residents will pay taxes on this bond, but the money stays in Alpine. The money will improve our schools in Alpine. Whether or not you have kids going to school in Alpine, if you are a taxpayer in Alpine, the most valuable assets you own as a taxpayer is our schools until the Alpine park gets built,” he said.
Lyon said for all those reasons, he supports Measure U, and the board is a conservative board.
“This was a really well thought out bond. The San Diego County Taxpayer’s Association, whose job is to be a taxpayer’s watchdog, not only supports our bond, but they also signed on to the letter of support that is going into the ballot for voters to read,” he said. “I thought it was important to create a bond that the Taxpayer’s Association supports, and they do.”
Lyon said that is the biggest thing that he is running for, but he also supports the district’s superintendent and is proud of the work the board does.
“My kids are going to the schools in Alpine. I feel we have many positive things happening with what we have done over the past eight years. There is always room for improvement, but I think this bond passing will help us reinvest in our campuses, our classrooms, our roofs, ACs, windows. It is an overall good investment for our taxpayers,” he said. “I want to make sure that I earn Alpine taxpayer’s trust and spend the money properly. I would rather come back to taxpayers every few years and ask for smaller amounts of money so that they are not paying enormous amounts of interest on larger bonds.”
