Schools to spend $1.67 million on projects

Sisters Elementary School needs a long list of repairs and the school district must pay for remodeling the administration building, remodeling and furnishing Sisters Middle School and more.

The bill is steep — over $1 million — and thanks to lucrative real estate transactions, the money is there to pay it.

“It’s just good fortune that leaves us in this position…The (school) district got a winning lottery ticket, so we’re able to pay off our Visa bill.”

That’s the way Sisters School Board member Mike Gould summed up the situation the board discussed last Wednesday, January 11. Because this was a work session and not a regular meeting, no formal decisions could be made. But unless something unexpected happens, at a special meeting January 30 the board will approve a plan that will cover about $1.67 million worth of capital improvements.

Nearly two-thirds of the money, $1.07 million, will come from the proceeds of last year’s sale of the Lundgren Mill property, the lottery ticket in Gould’s metaphor.

In its first meeting on this topic two nights earlier, board members exhibited some turmoil at the prospect of using Lundgren Mill money for the projects Supt. Ted Thonstad outlined. They were worried about the fact that in August 2004, before the 40-acre property was ever sold, the board adopted a resolution pledging to use sale proceeds only for capital projects, which is no problem, but adding: “No more than $100,000 shall be spent from the Lundgren Mill account in any one year unless the school board declares the overages are due to extraordinary circumstances.”

By the end of Wednesday’s discussion, the board seemed prepared to make a declaration of “extraordinary circumstances.”

Accomplishing the total plan will require all of the $426,779 remaining in the Lundgren Mill account today from the down payment on the property plus all but about $120,000 of the $769,300 payment that is due September 30. That payment falls in the district’s 2006-07 fiscal year, so some of the projects must be deferred until then.

One of the projects on the list for both years envisions repairs and deferred maintenance of the Sisters Elementary School building. Thonstad asked that the board authorize a thorough assessment of that building’s needs and warned that such an inspection may produce a list substantially larger than the $30,000 now scheduled for 2005-06 (for roof repairs and door replacements) and $150,000 for unspecified repairs in 2006-07.

But to put that in perspective, he noted that, “If we built that building today it would cost about $12 million.”

One of the building’s biggest problems is a heating/cooling system that leaves some the structure too cool in cold weather and too warm in hot weather, with no uniformity of temperature from room to room.

Gould conditioned his approval of the overall plan on the board’s sending a letter to “every taxpayer in the district” explaining the full context of the decision. He and Glen Lasken, one of two members (with Chairman Jeff Smith) who were on the board when the 2004 Lundgren Mill resolution was adopted, engaged in a colloquy designed to bring out facts that need to be included in such an explanation.

Lasken confirmed that five or six years ago when the board first began considering a sale of the land it almost accepted an offer for $292,000. Fortunately the offer “never quite came together” and the property was not formally put on the market right away. It sold in June 2005 for $3.2 million.

By rough calculation, the board members figured that even using more than $1 million of sale proceeds now and next year will ultimately leave the district with $1.5 million in the bank from this source — nearly four times more than the district would have received had the original “almost” offer been accepted.

Other money that will be used for the capital expenses on the list today include $411,839 left from the sale of the former middle school property in downtown Sisters, $213,880 in bonds sold to finance construction of a new high school and the remodeling of the former high school to create a middle school, and a small $3,000 grant for remodeling of the new administration building.

Projects listed for the remainder of 2005-06 include: the administration building remodel, $633,057; remodeling and furnishing the middle school to prepare for adding the fifth grade this fall, $190,000; finishing modular classrooms for the Flex program, $53,752; finishing the administration building’s shared (with city and library) parking lot, $50,274; remaining high school work, $25,000; fire alarm system replacement at the middle school, $20,724; landscaping and installing a sprinkler system at the administration building, $20,000; paying the City of Sisters for system development charges at the middle school, $13,754; repairing the bell and fire alarm systems at the elementary school, $13,350.

Projected and obligations listed for 2006-07 are: reserving $200,000 for future water rights purchases for the high school; repaying a bank loan for technology equipment, $165,000; paying for building evaluation and repairs at the elementary school, $150,000; paying the City of Sisters for charges likely to be forgiven, $80,000; repaying a bank loan for new computer system servers, $60,000.