$100-Million School Bond Sought : Burbank: Board plans April election. It hopes to rebuild and renovate campuses. Officials hope for another $38 million from city, state sources.

The Burbank school board will hold a special election in April to ask voters to approve a $100-million bond issue needed to renovate the district’s deteriorating schools.

“The message of the last election was the rebuilding of the schools,” board member Denise Wilcox said. “The people who were elected really did hear the message that the voters sent out.”

Approved Thursday night on a 5-0 vote, the bond election is the major component of a financial plan that would also draw on city and state resources. The goal of the plan is to raise about $138 million that school officials say is needed to rebuild and renovate the schools.

Burbank High School, which is about 70 years old, would be completely rebuilt. Burroughs High School would be renovated and expanded, and the district’s middle and elementary schools would also be renovated, board members said.

Under the plan, the schools would also receive about $23 million from the city’s Redevelopment Agency and about $15 million from the state.

Board members and their consultants said they are confident that voters will support a $100-million bond, which requires approval of two-thirds of the voters, based on a survey of 400 registered voters conducted earlier this year.

“I think there’s a great likelihood that it will be approved by the voters,” board President Elena Hubbell said. “We have a major charge ahead of us to get information out about the needs and the conditions of the schools.”

The bond, which would apply to commercial and residential properties, would cost the typical Burbank homeowner $36 a year, said Bruce W. Kerns of Stone & Youngberg, the board’s financial adviser. The tax would be based not on a property’s market price, but its assessed value determined by the county tax assessor.

In Burbank, the median assessed valuation for houses is $101,000, Kerns said.

By law, the funds raised could only be used to rebuild and improve the physical condition of the schools, not for such expenses as teacher salaries or school supplies.

But Dr. S. Michael Stavropoulos, a frequent critic of the board, challenged Kerns’ figures.

“How could your adviser perpetrate such a lie?” he asked the board.

Stavropoulos argued that the assessed valuation of properties sold in the district has been decreasing over the last two years.

The board may also face opposition from some senior citizens on fixed incomes, Hubbell said, but board members are sensitive to such concerns and will “get out to that community and explain that it’s assessed value and not market value.”

“We’re asking that the average homeowner commit to $36 a year,” she said. “For many people, senior citizens, it will be a lot less than that. We’re hoping they’ll remember that they raised their children in this school district.”

An important factor in hammering out the plan is the board’s “good working relations with our City Council,” Hubbell said.

The board and the council have held joint study sessions and, because of cuts in their administrative staff, board members have relied on the skills of the city staff.

But the board was also concerned about the possibility of the city using school district land in exchange for financial support.

On Tuesday, the City Council directed its staff to study the possibility of using the school district’s headquarters as a possible joint facility that also would house the Buena Vista Library.

Jocelyn Y. Stewart is a Times staff writer and Ed Bond is a correspondent.