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Voters turn down plan to reduce Hugo ISD
By Bill Hankins
The Paris News
Published November 11, 2009
HUGO, Okla. — Hugo voters turned out in big numbers Tuesday, defeating a highly controversial Hugo school election that could have reduced the size of the Hugo Independent School District by 19 square miles.
Voters defeated the issue 694-133, an unusual turnout for a school district election.
At stake was the deannexing of part of the Hugo school district into the Rattan Independent School District in Pushmataha County.
Hugo School Superintendent Tony Daugherty said. “We thought that was a pretty good turnout when nothing else was on the ballot.”
“We talked with a lot of people out there whose land is part of the 19 acres that would have been deannexed to Rattan, and they are real excited the vote went the way it did,” Daugherty said.
A group of people in the Messer community — nine families — who already transfer to the Rattan school district circulated petitions to call for the vote to deannex from the Hugo school district so their property taxes can be paid to Rattan.
“I have never, ever heard of that kind of situation before, and the Hugo school district can’t afford to lose property in the Hugo school district,” Daugherty said earlier. “If that had passed, other school districts near Hugo could have tried the same thing.”
Soper and Fort Towson school districts lie next to the Hugo ISD.
“I intend to be in Oklahoma City tomorrow to visit with the State Department and their attorneys to see how this could have happened,” Daugherty said. “Oklahoma school law addresses annexation but not deannexation. I intend to ask a lot of questions about this situation.”
Daugherty said if this is allowed, other school districts nearby could do the same.
“I would have to pay for those elections just as I did for this one,” he said.
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