Posted on

Charles City High School facilities public meeting looks at costs, tax impact

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Money is going to be one of the biggest questions when talking about fixing, renovating or replacing the Charles City High School, a group of consultants said Tuesday evening.

The group discussed possible costs of three options, where the money could come from and its potential impact on property taxes at the community forum held at the high school. About 45 people attended the public meeting.

The options and possible costs are:

• Fixing critical items – $13.47 million to  $17.73 million.

• Renovating the facilities with some new construction – $28.42 million to $32.98 million.

• Replacing much of the high school – $33.95 million to $37.92 million.

Charles City High School facilities public meeting looks at costs, tax impactRyan Ellsworth, a project executive with Estes Construction of Des Moines and Davenport, talked about how Estes had come up with the the cost estimates.

It’s too early to know specific costs such as how much cement or how much gypsum board will be needed, so “this is really based on two things – the quality and the square footage of the project,” he said.

“Quality in school projects does not change a whole lot,” he said. “We know we need long-term investment buildings. We don’t need the Taj Mahal, but we want something more than a pole barn.”

Ellsworth said Estes works with schools all over the state, and “we have a really good pulse on what school square footage is costing.”

“How do we control the unknowns?” he asked. “We’re looking at a year out, probably more, before anything actually gets done for design to be completed. Looking into the future is difficult, especially this last year – we’ve seen some of the highest escalation we’ve ever seen in construction. It’s a really tricky and crazy time.”

He said their budgets control for this through a contingency, which might be 5%, 10% or even 15% of the total budget that is set aside for things that are unexpected; allowances that set aside an amount of money for known items where the actual cost isn’t yet known; and an escalation factor based on what they think construction costs are going to do in the future.

“All the numbers you see tonight are based on assuming a bond referendum happens in March – that’s when design would begin,” Ellsworth said. “Design would end at the end of next year, which would mean we’re escalating to the beginning of 2024, for what we would expect bid costs to be in our diagrams tonight.

Brad Leeper, a partner and architect with Invision Architecture, talked about potential funding sources, which he called the four “buckets” available to the school district.

The first is the VPPEL, a physical plant equipment levy that Charles City School District voters have already approved, that levies $1.34 per $1,000 of assessed valuation. (This is separate from another 33 cents per $1,000 PPEL that the school board approved on its own.)

“It’s about $4 million available in that fund. That’s for computers, buses, furniture, potentially equipment – maybe a boiler goes out or we have a roof leak,” Leeper said.

“We’re not taking anything out of that bucket,” he said, because it should be available as an emergency fund for the district to use not connected with the high school project.

The second bucket is a general obligation bond, which could be as high as $2.70 per $1,000 of assessed property valuation. Based on the total property valuation in the school district, that could raise as much as $26.4 million. General obligation bonds for construction projects require a 60% majority to pass in Iowa.

The third bucket is a higher levy general obligation bond, up to $4.05 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, which could raise up to $39.7 million.

“This is probably not a route that we’re going to go down,” Leeper said. “That’s just something that I think we heard generally people are not going to have an appetite to go there. We know there’s been some increase in taxes for other things, and so that’s a discussion we had in our task force meetings as well.”

The higher levy bond would require two votes, the first to approve the higher levy amount, and a second to approve the project itself.

The fourth bucket is issuing revenue bonds that would be backed by and repaid through the district’s share of the state SAVE fund – Secure an Advanced Vision for Education – which is a 1% sales tax that is already part of the state sales tax that is collected for school funding and distributed according to population.

That could provide up to about $13.1 million for the Charles City School District that could be used for the high school project.

When the new middle school was constructed, it was paid for with PPEL funds and a previous version of the 1-cent sales tax for education money.

With the state SAVE fund revenue bonds and a $2.70 general obligation bond, the district could raise $39.5 million. If it decided to try to pass a referendum for the higher $4.05 general obligation bond levy, it could raise up to $52.8 million.

The Charles City School District has a current debt service limit of $42 million. The “comfort zone limit” would be $33 million, Leeper said.

Leeper went through a chart that showed the potential impact on property texes from various general obligation bond levies.

The “fix it” option would need about $1 per $1,000 assessed property valuation in addition to the SAVE revenue bonds. That would mean about a $49.32 annual increase in property taxes on a house assessed at $100,000 valuation, or about a $389.52 annual increase in property taxes on 320 acres of agricultural land.

The “rejuvenate” option would require an additional $2.95 per $1,000 to repay the general obligation bond portion, or about $145.32 annually for the $100,000 house or $1,149 additional annually for the 320 acres.

The ”replace” option would require a $3.90 per $1,000 levy increase and cost $192.24 more annually for the $100,000 house and $1,519.08 additional annually for the 320 acres of ag land.

 


School district looks at helping with auditorium cost

In addition to the price ranges for each of the three options regarding the Charles City High School – fix it, renovate it or replace it – graphics presented at the meeting also show how much additional cost the school district would bear if it paid half of the cost of a new auditorium, or about $7.75 million of a total $15.5 million estimated price.

Tim Mitchell, who was at the meeting and is the chair of a committee working to raise private funds for a new auditorium that would be given to the school district, told the Press the committee’s goal is still to raise 100% of the costs for an auditorium through donations and grants.

“The school district put that in there,” he said about the figures potentially including public money for an auditorium.

“Nothing has changed” as far as the committee is concerned, Mitchell said.

Social Share

LATEST NEWS