Published: June 28, 2008 12:19 am            

Tax would help schools meet mandates

By TESA CULLI

tesa.culli@register-news.com

MT. VERNON — During an informational meeting on the Illinois Schools Facilities Tax earlier this week, one of the ideas that came forward was the creation of a report on the condition of schools county-wide.

That’s something that District 80 Superintendent Kevin Settle said has been done in the city schools and is why he believes the tax would help the district.

“We spent about two years going through our Life, Health and Safety surveys and going over facilities needs in our buildings,” Settle said. “We have a list of over $4 million in projects that have to be done by law. The Life, Health and Safety surveys are done every 10 years, and we had ours done three or four years ago. They give you three years to accomplish some of the projects, and the 10 years for others. We knew what we had to do besides the regular things that come up. Last month we had to borrow $1.7 million. What I’d like to do is give that money back to the taxpayers and use the sales tax instead.”

County schools have been discussing whether or not to go to referendum on the new sales tax, which has been implemented in Williamson County since its approval by the General Assembly. Under terms of the facilities tax act, county schools work together to pass the sales tax at a rate determined by the schools. If voters approve the measure, the tax is collected and distributed to all schools in the county based on the school’s annual attendance percentage. The funds can only be used for school facilities purposes, such as acquisition, development, construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, improvement, financing, architectural planning and installation of capital facilities consisting of land, buildings and durable equipment. In addition, schools can use the funds for fire prevention, safety, energy conservation, disabled accessibility, school security and specified repair purposes.

Retail sales except for cars, boats and RVs, mobile homes, food, drugs and farm equipment and parts are affected by the facilities tax.

To get the issue on the ballot, school districts with enrollment of 51 percent or more total enrollment in the county can pass a resolution for the referendum — then the county board is required to place it on the ballot. The other method to get the referendum on a ballot is for a county board to do it.

A caveat to the facilities tax is that even if approved by voters, the local county board is not required to impose all — or only impose a portion — of the sales tax increase approved. However, if the tax receipts are collected and any school in the county uses the funds as its primary source of revenue on alternate revenue bonds, the county can’t take away any portion that puts the payment of those bonds in jeopardy.

District 80 accounts for 25.1 percent of the total student enrollment in the county. The next highest enrollment is Mt. Vernon Township High School at 22.5 percent. Settle said at least one other school would be needed to decide to go forward with a referendum to get the question placed on a ballot.

Settle said the District 80 board has discussed many projects that would be able to use facilities tax dollars, including the demolition of Lincoln School and the Kenneth Martin Center campus.

“Estimates show we will have to spend about $400,000 for Lincoln and $350,000 for the Kenneth Martin Center,” Settle said. “I imagine those estimates have already gone up — they are about eight months old by now.”

Settle said the District 80 operations and maintenance fund expenses were at $1 million last year.

“About half of that would be applicable to this sales tax,” Settle said. “The other part, salaries for custodians and maintenance, would not be included. But we would be able to use $500,000 of sales taxes for recurring costs to maintain our buildings we spend every year.”

Settle said many residents don’t know that some of the facilities projects undertaken by school districts are mandated.

“I don’t think people realize the government requires us to make some of the school improvements that we do,” Settle said. “For example, this summer alone we’re spending $175,000 to replace all the interior doors at Casey. The ones we have are nice oak doors that have been there for years and years and years, and they’re fine. But, they don’t meet the new Life Health Safety Code so we had to replace them. Another example is the elevator at Casey. We’ve had it for years and it works great. But a law was passed that requires a sump pump in every elevator. Now, we have to drill into a perfectly good concrete floor that has never leaked to put in a sump pump, and it will probably make that floor leak from now on. And the cost of that is $10,000.”

Settle said at District 80 alone, the summer maintenance projects cost about $100,000.

“A lot of the things are things we choose to do, such as replacing carpeting, tile and painting,” Settle said. “But also we do things like tuckpointing and such that are maintaining the buildings. If someone has a maintenance program and plan ahead, they could easily spend $500,000 every year. For us, if we received the tax, the additional would go out for other expenses that you don’t plan on — like when the chillers went out at the Primary Center last year. Every year there are things that happen that you just can’t plan for. Plus, it’s good practice to be able to set some of that money aside every year because eventually you have to replace buildings. ... We know that we’ll have to do something with Franklin and Hall within the next 20 years. ... If you have a nest egg, you don’t have to go to property taxes to support that.”

Settle said the next step for school officials is to meet to determine which schools would pass the resolutions to take to the County Board, how much of a facilities tax to ask for — from 0.25 percent to 1 percent — and to decide whether to go to referendum in November or in April.

        

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