By JOSEPH KELLARD
The school board proposes funding the $28,606,902 capital-improvement project with a 20-year bond. The project would focus on improving instructional space and basic building systems where it's deemed necessary in the district's eight school buildings over the life of the bond.
The proposed upgrades include heating, ventilation, electrical, lighting, and fire-alarm systems and replacement or improvement of roofs, masonry, windows, doors, ceilings, floors, auditorium seats and lockers.
Oceanside's high school and middle school would undergo the project's major work. Both schools would see four new classrooms, reconstruction and drainage of athletic fields, and the conversion of shop rooms into state-of-the-art technology centers. The new rooms at the middle school would replace portable classrooms, and the high school would receive new physical education facilities, including an auxiliary gymnasium and girls' lockers.
If the bond is approved, the project will break ground within a year, School Board President Bob Transom said.
For such capital projects Oceanside receives 41 cents on the dollar in matching state funds, which the state usually reimburses a year after the money is spent. Oceanside includes $1.6 to $2.1 million in its overall budget for capital projects, and it would normally be reimbursed $820,000 a year later.
The state passed regulations last May requiring that the $820,000 be paid back over 20 years, which the state defines as the useful life-span of a capital project. The district contends that it makes little financial sense to continue to budget the $1.6 to $2.1 million each year when it will receive the 41-percent reimbursement over 20 years.
Both Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown and Transom said that issuing a bond for a 20-year project will be less expensive, since the work involved will be completed within three years, as opposed to the estimated 14 years it would take under the current system of one-year-at-a-time budgeting.
The proposal requires a smaller tax burden than if the standard amount is budgeted each year, the board claims. Further, interest rates on school-related bonds are presently at relatively low rates, between 3.5 and 4 percent.
"The bond is actually cheaper for the taxpayers," Brown told the Herald. "If this board has to go back and do this work through the old system over 14 years while under the new regulations, it's going to be more expensive because of how the state is giving back the money, and because inflation is going to make it cost more than $28 million. What they can do for the next three years with $28 million would probably cost between $30 and $40 million if they did it over 14 years because of inflation."
If the bond passes, the yearly tax increase for the average homeowner in Oceanside would be $79. If the proposal is voted down, and if the district continues to do capital projects at $1.6 to $2.1 million, the tax increase will be $99, Brown said. He estimates the savings to taxpayers over 20 years to be between $600,000 and $800,000. If passed, the net cost of principal and interest payments after state aid will be about $1.3 million per year, and payments will begin in June 2004.
The board has submitted a second proposal on capital projects that were included in the 2001/02 and 2002/03 budgets and previously approved by voters. If the first proposal passes, these projects -- four additional classrooms and irrigation at School 8, and a cafeteria at School 9E -- would be financed thorough the bond.
"The money for these projects has already been raised, and we will give the taxpayers their money back by lowering taxes over the next three years," Brown said.
In assessing the district's need for capital-improvement projects, the Buildings & Grounds Committee, comprising architects, contractors, teachers, administrators and parents, researched all categories of improvements the district has made over the past 10 years and projected further improvements that would be needed over the next 20 years.
In some schools, for example, the heating systems and windows were replaced within the past decade. If the bond passes, all schools that have not already replaced these components would do so within the next three years.
"I feel confident that we've covered all the major components and that we will provide the infrastructure that will be needed over the next 20 years," Transom said. "I feel that we've reserved enough money within our capital line so that if any extraordinary work is needed, barring a catastrophe, we can do that work within our $2 million line from now until 20 years from now."
