Alamance County commissioners agree local schools have serious needs, but are particular about from which pots of money schools spend.
“I don’t want us to be a roadblock to what the school board needs,” said Alamance County Commissioner Steve Carter. “The only issue for me is how do we pay for it and making sure the way we pay for it is the most efficient for our taxpayers.”
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The commissioners approved letting the Alamance-Burlington School System use nearly $4.8 million from its capital reserves for a set of projects like a roof replacement and a vocational building for the new high school. The school board had asked to use $9.6 million to fix three other roofs, make repairs at other schools and make up for the higher-than-expected cost of building a school.
While all the commissioners voted for the spending plan at this week’s meeting of the Alamance County Board of Commissioners, there were concerns if not dissent.
“I swear it seems like we’re pulling teeth,” said Commissioner Pam Thompson, who is , a former school board member. “I just want to make sure that we are not the problem stopping them from doing their projects because we can’t seem to take that step.”
Thompson said she saw a pattern of commissioners getting into the details of school board spending requests that she worried could damage the relationship between the two boards. It's a relationship that has been strong in the past few years, but had been notoriously contentious for years before that.
The biggest group of items on that list were from the new high school, which is mainly being paid for out of $150 million in voter-approved education bonds. High steel prices added about $4 million to the estimated cost of that project, so district administrators and the Alamance-Burlington Board of Education chose to pay for some expensive alternative items, like a $1.3 million vocational building and lights for a soccer field, with capital reserve funds instead of bond money.
The capital reserve is a roughly $24 million fund built with sales taxes restricted to education spending and part of a property tax increase, said County Manager Bryan Hagood. They cover cost overruns in bond projects, non-bond education projects and serve as a backstop for more volatile revenue sources like lottery money as the county pays those bonds down.
Several of the commissioners said the reserve was not the right source from which to take money. While the new high school was over budget, nine other bond projects look like they could come in under budget. Those savings could fund these other projects, and other needs, like new roofs on several schools. The school board has been keeping each project budget separate.
“It’s an inefficient way to run an organization,” said Commissioner Bill Lashley.
Other items, like tennis courts at the new high school, might not be necessary, said Board Chair John Paisley, if the City of Graham would build courts at nearby Graham Regional Park and gives the school access to them. That agreement hasn’t been made, and it’s not certain the city plans to build tennis courts, at least not yet.
“I think we’re jumping too quickly to spend money,” Paisley said.
After some prolonged debate, the commissioners approved funding for road improvements at the new high school site and Southern Alamance High School, which the Department of Transportation should reimburse; the most urgent roof project at Woodlawn Middle School; the vocational building; and, all the other new high school alternatives except for the $197,817 soccer field lights and $964,136 tennis courts.
Isaac Groves is the Alamance County government watchdog reporter for the Times-News and the USA Today Network. Call or text 919-998-8039 with tips and comments or follow on Twitter @TNIGroves.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Alamance County Commissioners cut school capital request in half