What to do with $21 million?

Darn shame Herb. You get a chanceto blog here with named commentors and you look to run.

The biggest point I’m making here Herb is that we must STOP spending and NOW. The district gets a windfall of $21.6 million and right away bleachers and lights are purchased for the football stadium. It is an arrogance Herb. So they won’t admit wrong but they insist on spending more. We have continually asked for real numbers for the operation costs for the new high school, not rounded down guesstimates. We already know we don’t have enough money to fully staff the janitorial staff or even the classrooms but will we be able to pay the utilities especially the air conditioning.

We need to take this money and pay down the referendum. As for new housing Herb, I continue to hear from people that the school will be to near capacity within a few years. Housing will explode back to pre 2007 numbers. Impact fees will not affect the start of a new subdivision. There are many falsehoods that need to be corrected namely, HOW are we going to keep this school district in the black especially when it is fair to assume looking at the candidates for school board that the teachers will more than likely receive a pay hike in their next contract talks.

The school facility is grand. I couldn’t imagine finding a school board, administration, teacher, students or parent that would not love what is beng built for DeKalb students. I just wish this community could afford it without sacrificing other schools, teachers, and huge property tax increases.

interesting that Lynn and I agree. I do support pre school but you don’t pay operating costs for long term efforts with one time money. Hard decisions are needed on how much to pay down the debt (that has been borrowed at a reasonable interest rate) and how much to fix elementary schools now to avoid future debt at an unknown interest rate). Maybe Ivan can use his building knowledge to provide an assessment of the physical needs of the elementary schools.

Ivan,while I agree with you that one pays attention to the past to prevent similar errors, we have a decision,in this case a good one, on how to use a large chunk of money. Under your let’s keep blaming people for past error logic, no one should ever buy a new house since the building and development profession as a whole was too optimistic about the economy . Such a logic, whether in public sector investment or in private sector investment, harms us all. And, I hate to think what the implications of your logic would be for the entire banking sector.

It is interesting, but maybe irrelevant to this thread, that the scream from Ivan is that it is ‘liberals’ who pushed for the school. Yup,I’m guilty,as a liberal. But the dominant forces pro the new school were those in the established business community and to the best of my knowledge small town business people tend not to be at the forefront of liberalism.

Anyway i have totally violated my anti-blog pledge. What started me was not the subject matter, but my professional aversion to the use of surveys to obtain answers to questions that are clearly nuanced and do not easily fit within categories.

Actually if closed form types of data gathering were to be used to ask about spending priorities, rankings of importance, or scaling, rather than simple choices would be a better way, or even paired comparisons, but I digress.

Enough blogging for the month or maybe longer..

Herb

Not to keep beating the proverbial dead horse here Herb but a new calculation was made by the same demographer the district used prereferendum several months after the referendum passed. Ure disregard and arrogance along with a school staff and administration stacked FPC voted to continue the oversized mega high school.

The district would be is much less debt trouble by listening to the new warnings. The FPCdid have much more up tp date information to use and foreclosures were on a huge increase when the updated information went to the demographer. Even school board President Mike Verbic openly admitted to having the new numbers for declining enrollment and revenue shortfalls but called continuing on course with the “Taj Mahal” as a mandate by the voters never once taking into consideration the misinformation given the voters. What would the voters done if presented the new information? The results would have ended much differently.

The problem here Herb is that none of this process allowed for a “worst case scenario”. Liberal thinking, Liberal spending, and now Liberal taxing. I also feel that voters need to be reminded who is responsible for not adjusting the construction plans when they had the opportunity to do so. Those who laughed at the voters after the election at a school board meeting and those who think nothing about spending more dollars instead of using the $21.6 million to give Dist. 428 taxpayers relief. I will continue to beat this horse Herb for a long, long time. Next opportunity will be when next years tax assessments come out. WARNING: this next one will be a real shocker folks). Maybe along with funding pre-school (not state mandated) we should also offer free before and after school baby sitting, supper, and bussing while at it. We don’t have the money for pre school and that didn’t stop spending of money we don’t have why should that deter the baby sitting idea?

After all Herb, with the new increase of taxes and fees, both parents will now have to find 2nd and 3rd jobs each.

Ivan,
Could you focus on the narrow question at hand rather than repeating what you have said before.

What we need is bottom line figures, not screeds on the past.

What we need now is how much per year modal home is now paying for the repayment of the bond.

Next, how much that would be reduced per month if a given percentage of the 21 million is pre-applied to the debt repayment.

(I could do the two calculations above)

Next, and what I can’t do without more data are the following:

(a) how much each home would pay per year if a certain percentage of EAV increased each year

and, even more complicated

(b) the trade off in debt occurred for using some of the momey for needed repairs in the elementary schools sooner rather than later, or letting the deterioration of these schools continue until their repairs are more expensive, At some point many of the elementary schools will need upgrading.

I cannot do the calculations for the later two models without more data

An aside, but a related one. I do support preschool education programs as data do show they pay off; but I am torn with using any one time sources of money (a grant from the blue) to pay for on-going operating costs. Layoff are harmful to those laid off as well of course to our children. But using one time money without having a replacement stream in mind to me is not a viable strategy.

Ivan as you are well aware none of us were able to adequately prepare for a recession of the extent and magnitude we now face.

herb

Herb, the shortfall from original projections demonstrated by the school referendum committee is already 2 years in the red. Just taking the new home projection is scary.

8,500 hundred homes in addition to the the standard average over 10 years adds another 2,200 homes to the pre-referendum Facilities Planning Committee (FPC) numbers. 10,700 homes needs to be built over 10 yeats to help fulfill the new EAV per year requirement along with property real estate taxes that were anticpated. Let’s not forget the children that are non existant now if none of these homes are built (use the Naperville formula, scary as heck but that formula is only used when attacking, I mean charging builders/developers impact fees).

That ends up really hurting because on top of counting on:
1. Impact fees from new homes
2. Property taxes from new homes
3. Fees charged to students from new homes
4. State dollars to school district from state’s obligation per student

This alone is a urge shortfall of revenue which is DEPENDED on to make this $110 million referendum work. This is a HUGE problem which can only be replaced by raising property taxes and fees charged to students with NEW fees to be looked at.
How else or where else will the money come from? From the group that promised to donate the dollars needed for the football stadium? LMAO! I don’t think so.

Maybe we can sell annual naming rights for the football stadium, the concert auditorium, the indoor track facility, the competition gym, the commons, and finally each classroom. How else? This should make the discussion easier when deciding on what to do with the $21.6 million from the state. PAY DOWN THE DEBT!!!!! Help the property owners out a bit, it’s the least that can be done for the gross error in math.

With the above numbers, we are already behind 2,140 new homes. Estimated real estate taxes would have been around $11 million for the PROJECTED homes to date with impact fees collected on these homes to have been around another $10 million not counting the up front dollars paid to the school district by developers with the land/cash ordinance. Howmany students would have resulted from these homes not built? Let’s use the a conservative number of 2.3 students per house would come out to 4,922 students NOT enrolled in Dist. 428 at what? $6,000 per student comes to another $25 million.

No wonder administration is cutting teachers, teacher aides, and other staff. No wonder schools must be closed down. No wonder appropriate numbers of maintenance staff cannot be hired to to take care of the new high school complex or Cortland grade school. Is this how we start off taking care of a $110 million investment? Remember it really is a $330 million plus investment by time the bond is paid back. Using the $21.6 million to lower the bond NOW would realize this community a $64.8 million plus savings over the life of this referendum bond.

Just think of all the dollars saved on this new mega-built state of the art all options used high school. When the students occupy the new facility this September, there will still be right around 1,400 plus seats available for future growth in this community.
NOTE: 1,100 plus homes currently available in DeKalb alone. Another 300 to 400 likely to end up foreclosed on and empty by years end and another 1,070 new home starts projected by Pre-referendum FPC not built bring total behind to 3,210. OUCH!

I’m devastated, “second favorite”?

Seriously I am asking about the actual numbers on the buy down of the debt. Turns out it is a non trivial calculation, again making assumptions about future growth, compound interest etc. Back of envelope calculations are not enough so am waiting to consult with those more knowledgeable.