Minutes - 20041214 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The Board considered approval of November 15, 2004 actual membership and capacity numbers of the Orange County Schools and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools; to receive 10- year student membership projections developed through agreed-upon models; and to consider reallocation of a portion of currently programmed debt issuance to address anticipated cost overruns in various critical school and County capital projects. John Link said that last year in 2003, the County; the three Towns of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough; and the two school systems entered into a mutual agreement to develop the Schools Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. The ordinance provides that development will be paced with the ability of the school systems to design and build schools and determine when buildings are needed. The County Commissioners can have the funding in place to build the facilities when they are needed so that there are no overcrowded school systems. Part of the SAPFO has the County and the two school systems consider the actual membership by grade and the capacity numbers far schools in bath systems at this time of the year. The unfunded mandate of reducing class size in K-3 has posed somewhat of a problem, and there is a letter from the County Attorney giving his opinion about the legal implications of the unfunded mandate. The Board is being asked to take action on the school capacity numbers and to begin a process to address the most urgent capital needs of the school systems and the County. Rod Visser said that during the work sessions in November the County Commissioners asked staff to work with the schools and the towns to accelerate the annual process laid out in the SAPFO by which the ten-year student membership projections are updated. Normally this would be done in the January-February timeframe. He said that the SAPFO committee will still produce its annual report and these materials are drafts. He said that building capacity is an issue that is recognized and it has not been fully resolved yet. He made a PowerPoint presentation of charts, which is incorporated by reference. He said that both school systems have been advised by their architects to anticipate that steel, concrete, and fuel prices are going to cause the costs of the two current school projects to significantly exceed the current budget allocations. There is very little flexibility over the next three years with regard to the debt capacity. In 2008-2009, the County gets additional capacity to issue debt. If the County Commissioners consider reallocating some of the anticipated debt from Elementary #10, the future CIPs would include it when it would be needed. Also, the Orange County Schools has indicated that construction must be started by mid-February to achieve the opening date of August 2006. John Link made reference to the recommendations on page four as stated below: - Approve the November 15, 2004 actual student membership numbers; - Receive the information about 10-year student projection averages; - Approve the building capacity figures based on the individual school building capacity numbers for bath school systems at the levels certified for 2003-04; - Indicate the Commissioners' intention to reallocate, as necessary and appropriate, funding from the previously planned issuance of $12.8 million in debt for CHCCS Elementary School #10 to address cast overruns for CHCCS High School #3, OCS Middle School #3, and other priority County capital projects as determined by the BOCC; - Direct staff to review the 2004-14 CIP to include a funding plan that would provide for the construction of CHCCS Elementary #10 along a timeline consistent with the need for new school space as identified in the updated SAPFO ten-year student membership projections (i.e., opening for the 2009-10 academic year).