Thursday, August 17, 2006

By JEFF DONAHUE
ThisWeek Contributor

Members of the Worthington City Schools Board of Education are one step away from placing a $37.5-million no-additional-millage bond issue on the November ballot to fund a wide-ranging package of capital improvements, including transportation, facilities and technology upgrades throughout the district.

Board members approved a resolution declaring the necessity of a bond issue and to submit the issue to the electors during their Aug. 14 regular meeting.

According to that resolution, issuing and selling $37.5-million worth of bonds will fund "renovating, repairing, improving, furnishing, equipping and constructing additions to existing school facilities, buildings and infrastructure; replacing existing equipment and constructing various permanent improvements; purchasing school buses and related transportation equipment; and curriculum implementation districtwide, including related textbooks and technology."

A special meeting has been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Worthington Education Center, 200 E. Wilson Bridge Road, to approve final legislation to place the bond issue on the Nov. 7 ballot.

District treasurer and chief financial officer Jonathan Boyd explained the no-additional-millage concept during the board's Aug. 14 meeting.

"As debt is paid off the millage begins to drop," Boyd said. "For example, when I arrived at the school district in 2002, residents were paying 5.8 mills. Today they are paying 3.8.

"Over time, as property values go up and debt is paid off, that millage continues to decline," he said. "What we are talking about then is basically a stairstep process where the millage would then drop as those bonds are paid off. What we are talking about now is issuing additional debt that basically, if the board agrees to the theory of no additional millage, then the millage rate would not rise above what the current rate is and it would basically expand the length of the debt."

Boyd said not all of the $37.5-million would be issued at once. Should economic conditions change, he said, the board would still have the option of issuing less than the total amount if necessary.

Board member Marc Schare announced during the Aug. 14 session that he would support the bond issue, calling it the "first step in solving three problems that have plagued the district for years: the lack of funds for essential repairs to facilities and buses, the lack of funds for the purchase and implementation of new technology and the co-mingling, or some would say the contamination, of capital needs funds into the operating budget general fund."

While Schare said the board was taking the first step, he added, "The ultimate decision will reside, as always, with the taxpayers of the Worthington school district."

Schare said the biggest news out of the Aug. 14 meeting was the fact that the board had decided not to seek an operating levy in November.

"Sometimes the biggest story is not what we do but what we don't," he said. "The lack of an operating levy in 2006 is the biggest financial story of the evening. Who would have guessed back in May, when 7,000 people voted against the levy that we would not, as a routine matter, put the question back before the voters in November?

"To be sure, the delay of the operating levy is equal parts luck and intent but its significance goes far beyond the $8-million shift over two years that enabled us to avoid the ballot in 2006."

Schare credited the administration for its willingness "to search for efficiencies and new ways of doing things, as well as a recognition that business as usual was detrimental to the long term interests of the district.

"More than anything else," he said, "this should tell the community that this board, Superintendent (Melissa) Conrath and treasurer Boyd are serious about addressing the concerns that led to the levy defeat in May."

Schare noted that while he usually isn't the easiest board member to convince when it comes to levies, he does believe in the bond issue.

"The district has issues that need to be addressed and the bond issue is the most taxpayer-friendly way to address them," he said. "This issue is a fiscally conservative, taxpayer-friendly package that addresses needs that have to be addressed sooner or later and does so in a way that defers new taxes for seven years and even then keeps the millage relatively small."

"I'm not 100 percent convinced that the bond is the best way to go," board member David Bressman said. "I think that in the past, we have gotten into a bond cycle where we pass a bond, we do a whole bunch of repairs that need to be done and get put off and then we don't have a PI (permanent improvement) levy. So we come back to the general fund, we dig into the general fund and then we come back for another bond."

Bressman said he would support the bond issue but he still thinks a permanent improvement levy will have to be placed on the ballot eventually.

"I do think a PI levy, at some point, has to go on so that we can plan accordingly and not have massive amounts of repairs and things build up and then come to the public," he said. "But I'm going to support the bond because the need is there."