I interrupt this vacation from blogging just to make people aware of a proposal that’s on the board’s work session agenda for tomorrow night. The proposal would change the district’s facilities plan to greatly accelerate the schedule for the bond-funded construction projects. Instead of completing the projects by 2024, the district would complete them all by 2021, and some projects (such as the Tate and Alexander additions) would move from the end of the list to the beginning. You can see the details of the proposal here and in the other documents attached here.
I don’t immediately have an opinion about whether the acceleration is a good idea. Most of the air-conditioning projects were scheduled in the first three years anyway, so it’s not immediately clear to me that the proposal would get us to full air-conditioning any sooner. On the other hand, an accelerated schedule means building capacity additions even sooner than the district otherwise would, when it’s possible that the passage of time would show that enrollment doesn’t justify some of them. (There were at least some bond proponents who suggested that voters shouldn’t worry so much about the questionable capacity additions because the district had the time and the flexibility to change the plan if it needed to.) There may well be financial advantages and disadvantages to acceleration, though I hope the discussion of them is more careful than some of the discussion during the bond campaign. (See this post.) The acceleration would also mean that the full tax impact of the borrowing will occur sooner, and not on the somewhat more phased-in schedule the district identified during the bond campaign.
Whatever its merits, the proposal certainly does raise one question: Was the administration aware, during the bond campaign, that this change would be proposed just a month after the voters approved the bond? Were any board members or candidates aware? If so, why did they wait until after the election to raise it? Much of the debate around the bond proposal focused (reasonably) on the details of the underlying plan and on the degree to which a favorable vote would commit the district to that plan. Some candidates and bond proponents acted like any change to the facilities master plan would be an unthinkable mistake. Knowing that acceleration was possible (and maybe even in the works?) would have been helpful for voters as they were evaluating whether the $191 million bond proposal was worthy of their support. I’m not saying it would have changed the result—I could see it working either way, or having no effect—but why not be candid about it?
In any event, just one month after it seemed like everyone was talking about the bond proposal, virtually no one seems to be aware of a proposal to make significant changes to the underlying plan. So take a look. If you feel strongly about it one way or the other, let the board know—and post a comment here, too, if you’d like.
UPDATE: There’s an item on the agenda of the main meeting (which happens before the work session) asking the board to approve a “preliminary official statement” related to the bond issuance. By all appearances, this preliminary official statement assumes in advance that the board will vote to accelerate the projects. (I say that because the amount listed on the statement, $58.9 million, roughly matches the total of the figures given in the yellow columns here for the initial series of bonds under the accelerated proposal.) That seems like putting the cart before the horse, if the board intends to do any real deliberation over the acceleration proposal.
One thing seems never to change: When the administration proposes something, it always seems to be presented as so immediately urgent that it can’t wait even another two weeks. It seems unlikely that the board will have fully debated the pros and cons of acceleration when it votes on that resolution, or even after the one work session. Nor will it have gotten virtually any public input on the idea. What is the justification for rushing into such a big decision?
