Interest in the fate of the Westerville school levy March 6 is high on both sides of the issue, judging by the number of involved volunteers.

Campaigning for Westerville schools’ November levy bid, the pro-levy group Our Community, Our Schools had a roster of about 40 volunteers.

Following the defeat of that issue, Our Community, Our Schools now has around 500 volunteers working to see Issue 10, the district’s March 6 request for a five-year, 6.71-mill emergency operating levy, passed, according to campaign chairman Rick Bannister.

“It’s like night and day between the other campaign and now,” Bannister said. “I’m not heading a campaign; I’m heading a movement.”

Anti-levy group Taxpayers for Westerville Schools also has seen an increase in volunteers and donations with this election, said campaign volunteer Jim Burgess.

“I’ve seen a lot of other people coming out of the woodwork who are on the fence, who are frustrated,” Burgess said. “This whole process has brought a lot more attention of people really looking at (district spending). I’ve seen a lot more frustration than anything for the way the school district has been managed.”

On both sides, volunteers who have never worked on a levy campaign said they have been motivated to step forward and get involved.

Eric Busch has lived in Westerville for 30 years, served on city council for three years and volunteered on multiple library levy campaigns. This is the first school levy he’s stepped forward to support.

“I think there’s a feeling that we can’t sit this one out. This one is too important,” Busch said.

Busch’s children graduated from Westerville schools. He said he wants to make sure others receive the complete, well-rounded educations that his children did.

“I can’t imagine stripping these opportunities from today’s students,” Busch said.

Rick Vilardo volunteered with Our Community, Our Schools in the fall, but the failure of the levy spurred him to be even more involved this time around.

“I was not that heavily involved in the fall. I passed out some literature,” he said. “People tend to wake up when something is valuable to them.”

Vilardo said Westerville schools are doing what the community asked of it: Educating children for the 21st century students while operating on an efficient budget. The district has seen consistent increases in its performance, Villardo said.

However, he said, all of that will be lost if the levy fails. Once cuts are made to district programs, he said, it will be hard to rebuild them.

“We’ve achieved a level of success by all data points,” Vilardo said. “It takes a long time to build something up.”

Tracy Davidson, who also worked on the fall campaign, said she’s committed to helping the levy pass because the students who need the most help, such as those with special needs and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, will be the ones who are most affected by cuts.

“I’m worried about those kids because they don’t have a voice and they don’t have someone there for them,” Davidson said.

On the other side of the levy issue, volunteers with Taxpayers for Westerville Schools said they were drawn to volunteer because of concerns over growing district expenditures and rising taxes.

Dave Fitzpatrick said he learned about the group while attending a school board meeting in June.

“I’d never been to a board meeting in my life. My family’s been here in Westerville for about 10 years, and it seemed like every few years, there was a new levy, and it was like, ‘what’s going on?’” Fitzpatrick said.

He heard members of LevyFacts, the parent group of Taxpayers for Westerville Schools, propose several cost-cutting measures to the board. Fitzpatrick said he was inspired by the work the group had done and started to take a deeper look into the district’s budget.

“The more you learn, at least for me, the madder you get,” Fitzpatrick said.

Taxpayers for Westerville Schools volunteer John Sodt has a similar story.

“I was one of those people who used to just sit on their hands and watch TV and watch what was happening,” he said.

Sodt said he can’t continue to afford the frequency of the district’s levy requests.

“Every few years, we seem to have these levies coming through. É It was just alarming to me to think that people in Westerville can just keep putting money up,” Sodt said. “Going into retirement, I just can’t see myself affording a $400, $500 property tax increase every few years.”

The economy drove Carol and Karl Hribar to get involved with the anti-levy campaign.

“We’ve been living here in Westerville since 1984,” Carol Hribar said. “Just like any other taxpayer, you kind of watch what the schools are doing with one eye — I would say, probably in like 2008 when the economy was getting rough for everybody. We are both self-employed and our income was falling.

“We kind of opened up our eyes a little bit with the (2009) tax levy.”

Hribar said she and her husband started to look at the district’s finances and met other people, like those involved with LevyFacts and Taxpayers for Westerville Schools, who were doing the same.

“Even though it (the 2009 levy) did pass, we looked at the schools a little more in detail, and we found out that other people were doing that,” Hribar said. “As we found out the facts and the figures, we worked pretty hard to get the (November) levy defeated.”