Wednesday, April 28, 2004

BoE noncommittal on $69.3 million school shopping list By J. FRANK LYNCH jflynch@theCitizenNews.com Members of the Fayette County School Board told Superintendent John DeCotis last week they won’t feel comfortable locking in any of the details of a proposed November tax initiative to fund capital projects until a community survey is complete. Taxpayers hoping to influence the board’s decision-making process as it considers the next five-year building program have until Friday to complete the online survey. The questionnaire has been accessible via the district’s Web page, www.fcboe.org, for most of April, but only about 600 had been completed as of last week, said spokeswoman Melinda Berry-Dreisbach. The simple pull-down menu asks a series of questions intended to measure community support for or against building new classrooms. Administrators also hope it hints at whether voters would now support a one-cent increase in the local sales tax for that purpose. Twice in the 1990s, Fayette Countians turned down school board requests to raise the sales tax. At the April 19 board meeting, DeCotis said the feedback was still coming in but recommended the board go ahead and commit to project priorities while the method for raising an estimated $69 million is finalized. At the top of the needs list is a new $15 million middle school in the central part of the county, on Lester Road adjacent to Cleveland Elementary. Classroom additions are proposed at Rising Starr Middle School, as well as Brooks, Peeple’s and Minter elementary schools. Nearly every campus in the county would receive some kind of renovation or overhaul. North Fayette would get a new roof for $425,000; J.C. Booth would receive an air-conditioned gym, new lockers, new carpet and paint, modern kitchen equipment and marker-boards in place of old-fashioned chalk boards to the tune of $1.275 million. Three new elementary schools recommended as top needs during the board’s planning retreat in January have since been moved to the bottom of the 28-item list, though $1.2 million to purchase land for two of the schools ranks No. 1. The third school is planned on a plot of land donated by developer John Wieland adjacent to Centennial in Peachtree City. “We’re not ready to act, but we are ready to look at the projects on the needs list so we can at least start planning how much it will cost and then start telling the community what we are planning to do,” DeCotis said. “Can this list be changed?” asked Janet Smola. Though DeCotis said it could, none of the board members felt comfortable committing so soon. “What I was trying to do was get a list of the projects to the people so they would know what we were looking at,” DeCotis explained. Member Lee Wright countered, “If we vote on this tonight we’re going to set a level of expectations that we might not be able to meet. I think this is premature.” Besides, said Wright, early survey results showed residents were favoring the penny sales tax instead of the more traditional method of funding new schools, the sale of bonds. But choosing one or the other funding mechanism could mean significant adjustments to the construction schedule. Revenue from a bond sale is made available to the district at once or in large lump sums, while sales tax revenue comes in annually over the length of the SPLOST, likely five years. “Can we put together the potential revenue from a SPLOST versus a bond?” Wright asked. “We need more time to look at potential interest earnings and debt service,” from the SPLOST option, added Smola. DeCotis pointed out that SPLOST revenue is also dependent on the economy. “If we had done a SPLOST this last building program, we’d only have half a high school” he said, referring to Whitewater. At the board’s suggestion, DeCotis withdrew his recommendation and tabled it until the May meeting, when results of the survey will be compiled. The building program is likely to come up again Tuesday, however, when the board meets for the second of a series of budget workshops. Finance Director James Stephens reported April 19 that more than $2 million in staff requests for the next school year had been denied, and about 50 additional employee hires were still up in the air yet the working budget remained more than $4 million in the red. A special called session of the state legislature scheduled for May 3 by Gov. Sonny Perdue should finally settle some of the state-level funding questions that have held up the local budget, Stephens said. An estimated $7.5 million in state education funds hang in the balance for Fayette County alone, said Stephens, though he said a decision by the General Assembly to delay a further reduction in classroom sizes will save the district more than $800,000 next year. The budget workshop is at 7 p.m. May 4 at school board headquarters.