Coffee Commission votes to suspend further middle school funding
| 09 March 2010
The fate of the planned new Coffee County middle school is uncertain following a vote by the Coffee County Commission to suspend further funding for the project.
Citing the current state of revenues due to the recession, the commission Tuesday voted 19-2 to approve the recommendation of its budget & finance committee, “that we need not issue the bonds for the building of the new Middle School until such times when the financial conditions improve.”
Budget committee chairman Ted Frisby said that when the commission voted in 2008 to fund $43 million for the Coffee County School Board’s building program, it stipulated that the budget committee would review the state of county revenues two years later to determine if the county could afford further funding for the program.
Frisby said that with rural sales tax collections down due to the recession, the committee determined that without improvement, they would be insufficient to pay off the debt for issuing more bonds at this time.
The commission also approved a motion by Commissioner Virgil Alford to encourage the school board to look at savings realized so far in the program to renovate North Coffee and New Union elementary schools.
Those projects are already included in the planned second phase of the building program.
Schools Director Kenny Casteel said that construction prices have been significantly lower because of the recession, and as a result, the system has seen $7 million in savings over the estimated costs on projects in the first phase, which include renovations at Hillsboro Elementary, construction of the new Deerfield Elementary, and the new middle school. He said that the savings the county has seen in those projects should be sufficient to fund the North Coffee and New Union renovations.
The Coffee County School Board’s plans for the middle school have generated controversy, due to its proposed location within the Manchester city limits, and adjacent the Coffee County Administrative Plaza.
The commission last year passed a resolution from its budget committee calling on the school board to find another location for the school. School Board Member Janet Galyen noted that the committee’s recommendation to suspend funding followed the board’s vote to take no action on the commission’s resolution.
Casteel said later that the school board may or may not be able to complete the new middle school with funds already allocated for the project, and that the suspension of funding or the middle school project will increase the costs.
“If our estimates on the site work are under what’s left in the remainder of the bond, we still could go forward,” he said. “I just don’t know what the site work is going to be until we start getting estimates from our architects. But if we don’t take advantage of the site work during this season of spring and summer, we will have to do that next year, and bid prices will increase, and that will decrease our savings that we were going to use to renovate North Coffee and possibly New Union.”
Casteel said that the middle school would provide much needed relief for Central High School, and that the high school will need that relief in order for students to meet the requirements of the American Diploma Project, adopted by the state, which mandate that graduating seniors have 24 credits to graduate, four more than the current 20.
Those requirements would go into effect at the same time the middle school is scheduled to open, he said.
He said that the creation of the new middle school would facilitate the renovations at North Coffee and New Union. With the current middle school made vacant, students from those elementaries could have classes in that building while their schools are renovated.
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