Photo: The entrance to the 7-8 grade building at Pagosa Springs Middle School.
As I attempted to explain in Parts One and Two of this editorial series, governments in Colorado often resort to using Certificates of Participation — “COPs”, also commonly referred to as “Lease Purchase Agreements” — when they want to build new buildings without voter approval.
In the good old days, before COPs, the Archuleta County government, and the Pagosa Springs Town government, and the Archuleta School District — and our other local governments — would seek voter approval for a general obligation bond (“GO bonds”) to fund new buildings. This voter-approved funding tool increased the property tax revenues received by the requesting government, to cover the bond payments. The property tax increase was exactly equal to the amount needed to make the loan payments.
The Archuleta School District used this GO bond tool to fund the Pagosa Springs High School, which opened its doors in 1998. The voters agreed to pay more taxes to fund the loan.
But when the Town government wanted to build a new Town Hall at the end of Hot Springs Boulevard, they didn’t ask for voter approval, but instead used a Lease-Purchase Agreement to fund the project. As a result, the annual loan payments had to be diverted from other municipal needs, because the Town was collecting no added revenues coming in from the taxpayers.
The same thing happened when the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners used COPs to build a new, oversized detention center — after failing twice to get voter approval. No new funding was created to cover the cost. As a result, the BOCC now diverts money from Road & Bridge and other departments to cover the loan payments.
In Parts One and Two, I shared comments by our current BOCC, suggesting that the three of them prefer not to use COPs for funding a planned County administration building.
That implies a future ballot measure, that we can vote on.
Recently, Archuleta School District began a “Master Planning” process to analyze the options for upgrading or replacing at least three school buildings — Pagosa Springs Elementary School and the two buildings that comprise Pagosa Springs Middle School.
We might be seeing a request for a general obligation bond in the near future, depending on the advice from the Master Plan Advisory Committee (MPAC).
Pagosa Springs Elementary School was built in 1969, with a major addition and upgrade in 1984. It received a new roof and new light fixtures circa 2012. I understand that a roof on a public building is expected to last about 20 years.
The 5-6 grade build at the Middle School was built in 1924, and has received numerous upgrades since then. It got a new roof about three years ago, funded in part by a BEST (“Building Excellent Schools Today”) grant.
The 7-8 grade building at the Middle School was originally built in 1954 as a high school. (The 1924 building had previously served as the high school.) It has also seen numerous upgrades, including a second gymnasium, and got a new roof about 10 years ago. The Town Park across the street served as the football field for the high school, and continues to function as the athletic field for the Middle School.
All three of these buildings have brick exteriors, which generally require less upkeep than other types of exterior treatments. The interior surfaces are also low-maintenance.
What does the community want to do with these schools? Keep maintaining them? Upgrade them? Abandon them, and replace them with new buildings?
That’s the central question now under consideration by the MPAC.
Disclosure: I currently serve on the MPAC as a representative of our local District-authorized charter school, Pagosa Peak Open School (PPOS). PPOS is not one of the schools that ASD planning to maintain, upgrade or replace.
To prepare for this article, and also for future MPAC discussions, I did a bit of research into Colorado’s BEST program, which has, since its creation in 2008, awarded over $3 billion in grants to more than 600 Colorado schools, improving health, safety and security for over 400,000 students. From the Colorado Department of Education website:
With funding from The Colorado State Land Board, Colorado Lottery, marijuana excise tax, and local matching dollars, BEST continues to improve Colorado’s educational environments through capital construction projects helping schools to realize CDE’s vision that “All students graduate ready for college and careers, and are prepared to be productive citizens of Colorado.”
I also found an interesting map, showing how BEST funding was distributed in 2014. I imagine most people would glance at this map and move on to the next web page.
But I found the map interesting… since I’m writing about Certificates of Participation and Lease-Purchase funding, and have some negative feelings about that kind of funding. (As do our County commissioners, apparently.)
We note here three types of BEST funding in 2014. Best Cash Projects (blue)… BEST Lease-Purchase Projects (orange)… and BEST Cash & Lease-Purchase Projects (green). We also see red pins stuck on the map to indicate “New Schools”. (I took the liberty of coloring Archuleta School District in pale yellow. We did not receive BEST funding in 2014, nor did we build any new schools.)
It would appear that nearly all of the “New Schools” were funded at least partly by Lease-Purchases; they are within orange and green districts.
This indicates a couple of things.
1. The voters didn’t approve enough general obligation bond funding to cover the new schools.
2. And, the State of Colorado and possibly the school districts themselves, are now diverting funds from other needs, to cover the ongoing Leases… because they didn’t have the full support of the taxpayers.
The map also indicates that the vast majority of school districts were NOT building new schools. They were upgrading their existing buildings, using BEST grants. Even though the program was named “Building Excellent Schools Today”… in fact, most districts were not “building excellent schools”. They were upgrading existing schools…
Read Part Four, tomorrow…