Auburn Enlarged City School District officials theorized last week that many voters rejected their proposed budget because they mistakenly thought they were voting on the installation of synthetic turf at Holland Stadium.

While we have doubts about the extent to which such confusion played a factor, it's probably a good bet that plenty of voters had the June turf vote on their minds when they stepped into the voting booth. A good number of “no” votes may have been cast to send a disapproval message about how they felt about the board's decision to put turf in front of them again after they had rejected it at the high school in 2006.

Whether the board's analysis is correct or not, though, it is clear that school officials understand that turf is an issue that brings out plenty of “no” voters. Therefore, it makes little sense for the district to lump turf into the broader $15.7 million capital improvement project, as they have done.

Our hope is that the board can and will separate turf from the rest of the project and give voters two propositions to consider on June 26 - one for the cost of turf installation and one for the balance of the project, the part that includes classroom and other infrastructure improvements more directly tied to the academic mission of the school district.

Failure to do so would seem to stack the odds highly against an approval on June 26. First, you have the recent history of a turf project being rejected. Then you have a regular school budget being rejected, something that in years past would have been unthinkable. If there's enough anti-spending sentiment to reject a budget, it's almost a guarantee that a capital project that includes turf will go down.

The question at this point is why risk the balance of the project. To date, we've yet to hear a good answer.