Twelve school districts are putting a multitude of bond measures before voters Tuesday with a total par amount of $480 million.
The lion's share comes from King County where Renton and Auburn school districts have $150 million and $54 million in bond measures, respectively, on the ballot.
In addition voters will decide on a $158 million library bond measure in Kings County.
If approved, the King County Library System would possibly sell debt to modernize existing facilities and build new libraries.
The smallest bond measure Tuesday is $1.7 million for the Paterson School District in Benton County.
The number of measures on the ballot are fairly typical for a February election, according to Jon Gores, a vice president at Seattle-Northwest Securities Corp., a financial advisory firm.
Snohomish County has three bond measures. The largest is for the Edmonds School District for $110 million. The other two, for $77 million and $59 million, are both from the Marysville School District.
Overall, most of the capital improvement projects are for modernization, Gores said.
Seattle-Northwest Securities studied the question of whether Washington's current economic climate -- with high unemployment and layoffs -- would have a significant impact on the passage of the measures.
"We found very little correlation as by those indicators," Gores said. "It gave us the feeling that our school districts should not despair since the economy is not necessarily a prediction of election results."
