20 febbraio 2025 Riunione dei Lease Revenue Bond Video e trascrizioni

Febbraio 21st, 2025 /
Alexander Glaves /
Affari, Aggiornamento sulla costruzione, Notizie, Consiglio scolastico PCSD

On Tuesday, February 25, 2025, the Provo City School Board will be holding a vote on a new Lease Revenue Bond. The following is an audio recording of the Thursday, February 20 informational meeting about the Lease Revenue Bond, with accompanying informational slides, and an audio transcript.

Meeting Transcript

Okay we’re going to go ahead and get started because it’s six o’clock and I want to value your time and make sure that we have plenty of time for questions. I am Superintendent Dau, I’m the superintendent here at Provo City School District. Thank you so much for coming out on a blustery evening to ask questions, to get some more information about the lease revenue bond.

And this is my counterpart. And I’m Devyn Daley. I’m the business administrator for the district. She’s going to be the one that explains all of the tax and money things so that everyone can understand it. And we will be making this presentation, available on our website. And there will also be a voiceover recording of it.

So if there are other people that you know that couldn’t be here, that want to maybe watch this and hear the explanations and hear the questions and things. We can direct them to the website. I also want to acknowledge our board members that are here. Will you guys stand up? And I will introduce you.

We have Jennifer Partridge, who’s our board president. Meg Van Wagenen. We have Melanie Hall right there. We have Emily Harrison. We have Terry McCabe right here. So thank you to them for being here. And I’m just going to turn it over to Devin. She’s going to give us the nuts and bolts of what’s going on.

And then I’m going to be the cool person that runs around with the microphone so you can ask questions and provide feedback and get clarification on things. And thanks again for being here. Okay, so we’re going to just talk about a little bit of the reason that we’re here, and then we’ll get going with some of the, probably the reason why most of you are here is to find out what this financial impact will be and what it means for you.

So we have two things that we desperately need to do right now. We need to finish Timpview and then we also need to do something with this site. We had a lot of feedback through the Shoreline process and now that we really need to make sure that we’re doing something with this site to make it useful and to, to put students on, on this site.

So those are the two biggest needs that we have- capital needs in our school district right now. So in 2019, um, the bond, the bond passed in 2000, we issued the bonds in 2020. Um, and it was really just for the one section of Timpview that was the worst. When they finished it, that, that part demolished the part that it was replacing.

They discovered a lot more structural issues within Timpview. There are pictures available also and old, old presentations that we’ve done. But I, this, this is really just a, we really need to get Timpview done and get this finished. So this is the Timpview site plan. This is what it will look like.

And I’m just going to go through it and get with you number one so that it’s on the voiceover recording. And so you can understand what it is that we’re doing. This area up at the top is the classroom wing that just was finished last year. And then this spot here is the gym. These are the spots that we, that right here is where we did the peers.

They also are just getting ready to open up the commons area and the other classrooms, the dance room, the wrestling room, those, those rooms that have been in this part of the construction. So we are within days of having, we just got occupancy yesterday for those new areas and then there’s just, yeah, yes, there, there is joy and much rejoicing about the, about getting occupancy and getting to, to use some of those spaces.

There’s still a couple things, the elevator, which is, the elevators are bad words for me because there’s always a delay with elevators and I’m not sure why. So the parts that we’re working on now, the parts that this bond will take care of are the cafeteria. The cafeteria is mostly structurally okay.

There’s some, there is some reinforced rebar in the walls, unlike some of the other areas in the school. So this is an area that they felt like a remodel would be better, and it would save about 7 or 8 million dollars from taking the whole thing down. The biggest issue with the cafeteria is underneath the cafeteria is the heart of the building with the boiler, the electrical, all of the mechanical pieces of the school are run there, which is another reason why we really wanted to avoid doing any kind of full rebuild because that would take down the school for a lot longer.

So that will be the first part that we do is that cafeteria and that mechanical room so that we can be all ready for the next section. The Performing Arts rooms are right here along with the main office. And then this is the area where the old building was that was torn down. So after the cafeteria is finished, they will continue on with the Performing Arts and the Auditorium and the CTE building.

Once those buildings are finished, then we have the main office and the Counseling Center. So the main office that is currently there and the Counseling Center will be torn down. And the Performing Arts, once the Performing Arts building has been torn down, they’ll start that admin and counseling wing.

So it’s a very, kind of, one thing leads to another. It’s not the whole thing can be done at one time, because there’s several things that need to be complete before they can move on to the next part of the building. And we want to still leave a spot for students. One of the original options a couple of years ago was to do portables, but the cost and the loss of parking was much more than we wanted to bear.

So that’s what will be the new Timpview site. Once it’s all finished. The timeline for construction is about four years. The cafeteria construction will take about a year. And then after that, the next part will be about a year and a half. And the last building will be about a year and a half.

And then we’ll be able to tie that whole building together. The Dixon site we built Shoreline. It’s a beautiful school down at Shoreline and we’re in the process of doing a boundary and feasibility study for the district. We’re working right now with the, we did a lot of the demographic study so we can kind of see what our starting point was.

And now they’re working on doing some boundary ideas and some ways that we can realign in order to make our schools more efficient. And so we’re looking at a couple of different options. One of the options is a CTE center for our secondary students. Many districts around the state have started building the CTE centers that are a magnet CTE center for some of those programs that maybe can’t bear an entire, they don’t have room for the schools, like maybe an aviation program or some of the other.

Large rooms that we could bring both Provo High and Timpview students in and be able to work more efficiently with those kids. So, how do we pay for it? So this is right now we’re in the process of doing a lease revenue bond. Now there’s two different types of bonds. A general obligation bond and then a lease revenue bond.

General obligation bonds are the ones that you find on your ballots in November. And lease revenue bonds are the ones that can be issued by the board at any time. It’s a, it’s a pretty lengthy process, but it’s one that allows us to do the bonds a little quicker. One of the reasons we decided to do it a little quicker was because we have the contractor on site.

Cleaning it all up and then bringing it all back a few months later just wasn’t very efficient or liable for a lot of people. They wanted to keep going with that building. And so that in the past, about 15, 20 years ago, there was a large difference between the two types of bonds, usually about a percent difference in the, in the interest.

Right now, it’s less than a half a percent that those, those are. So it’s not a big enough cost for us to really feel like going, not going forward at this point. And again, it can be at any time. And the timing just worked out really well for Timpview to just continue on with that. We did a, a new RFP for contractors.

It turned out Westland won that bid again, and they know the site so well that it, it really made a lot of sense. So the construction, our construction costs over the last five years have gone up about 150%. So the cost of what it would have been in 2018 if we’d issued the bond is a significant amount more now than it would have been.

And that’s not getting any better. We just received word this week that all of our HVAC components, our rooftop units, any of the gauges or anything, they’re all going up 6 to 8 percent beyond where we were even last week, or last month. So we wanna make sure that we can get that started and get those bonds to shoot before the, before the, the rates more inflation happens with that instruction or with the construction.

So the, the details are $70 million. What that will cover is the rest of Timpview and the design phase of Dixon, of this site. So once the board decides what we were, what we’re gonna do, then we will start that design process. We’ll do an RFP for an architect. And then we will start that design process, go through the bid process, and then the board intends to do a different lease revenue bond after we get that done, after all of the bids are in place so we know exactly how much we need.

And that is because once we have that contract price from the contractor, they can’t go over that unless we ask. So that’s the plan for it right now is that, that design phase so we know exactly what we’re going to be doing and then to finish up Timpview. So over the next three years, we will be paying off two bonds.

What that means is that the impact to your taxes is not as significant as it would be if those bonds were staying on. So it helps us kind of structure the bond payment so that we don’t have to start paying the principal until those two bonds are paid off.

So you’ll see right now on the second bullet, the current debt portion of property taxes is $123.13, and this is all based on this year’s valuations. What happens in next year’s valuations, I don’t know. We just, I’m just guessing based on this year’s valuations. So the, the portion for the property taxes is $123.13 per $100,000 of your, of your home valuation. So if you’re looking at a $500,000 home, the amount for property taxes is about $625.

Or $615, somewhere around there. At the peak of the debt, if we were to issue all of the bonds right now at when we, when we’re ready, ’cause I can stagger those a little bit as well, the amount of our total, the total debt would be $136 for a $100,000. So that $13 difference between the two is what that would be for an annual for $100,000. So a $500,000 home in the same vein would be $682. About a $65 difference from where you are right now. So, the total cost of the debt is a little bit higher, but because we’re able to structure it, so we can have those bonds fall off at the, at, at a really optimal time for us, that is the way that that will be structured.

And so the, the impact is, is a lot less. So, and that’s what those last two are. The 13 additional per, per year for every $100,000. So that’s that difference between the $123 and the $136. And then the $65 is that. So it’s, it’s about $5 a month. So, the timeline. So January 28th we had a board. A meeting where they convened as the Municipal Building Authority and approved, or they, they entered an intent resolution that they were intending to do the bonds.

So we have, there’s a 14 day period of that until we can. We chose to wait an extra two weeks so we could get some more input and have these public meetings before. We discussed it again on the 11th. And then we have the meeting tonight and last week at 10pm. On Tuesday is the official vote for the resolution to actually issue the bonds.

The approval of the issuance of the bonds. And the meeting starts at 6 o’clock at the district office in the Professional Development Center. So if it’s approved on February 25th around the beginning of April is when we will start issuing the bonds. Once we start getting timelines from the contractor, we will either issue, so the $65 a year is worst case scenario.

If we were to stagger the issuance of the bonds, so issue some in April and then some next year when they start the rest of the building, that would bring that down and, and extend that out just a little bit. We’ll, we’ll look at what’s best. If interest rates look like they’re going up for the payment of the bonds, we’ll likely issue them all and use that and the interest proceeds from the bond to pay off the interest the first couple of years.