Suburban groups say no to CMS bonds

The $290 million bond package for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools got its first formal opposition today,  as Tom Davis from SPARK Educational Performances and Tim Timmerman from SMART issued a statement urging voters to say no (read their statement here).

SPARK,  or Strategic Partners for Accountability and Reform of Key Educational Performances,  is a north suburban group that has argued for splitting CMS into smaller districts.  SMART, or South Mecklenburg Alliance of Responsible Taxpayers, is based in the southern Ballantyne area and joined with SPARK to explore the notion of splitting the county into northern, southern and central school districts.

Timmerman at a SMART meeting

It's unclear how many people these two groups represent.  "We've got hundreds of people out there who support us,"  Davis,  an Air Force retiree and Republican political activist from Huntersville,  said today. (Update: Davis, who ran for N.C. House in the 2012 Republican primary, says he's now registered unaffiliated.)  He said he and Timmerman weren't the only people who crafted the position statement,  but he declined to give numbers or names,  saying many fear running afoul of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce,  a major backer of the "Vote Yes for Education Bonds" campaign.

The  "vote no"  position paper raises several issues,  including uncertainty over the role that charter schools and vouchers will play in CMS growth projections,  skepticism about the  "no tax increase"  claim and a call for Mecklenburg County to focus its energy on getting teachers a cost-of-living raise.  County officials say they can cover the cost of repaying the CMS bonds,  along with $210 million in bonds for Central Piedmont Community College on the Nov. 5 ballot,  without raising taxes.  But Davis argues that today's voters and officials can't  "tie the hands"  of future county officials.

Davis

"Current elected officials and special lobbying groups cannot bind the voting privilege of future elected officials. This breaches credibility and trust,"  the statement says. "No one can guarantee what will transpire with future tax rates."

The  "vote yes"  campaign hopes to raise $300,000 in donations and has hired a PR firm to help make the case.  Davis said the SPARK/SMART effort won't be anything like that.  "We're not going to get money into it,"  he said.  "We're going to get the information on the street and let people make decisions."

He said the groups don't plan to take a stand on the CPCC bonds.

Just last week,  Davis was just appointed to the Bond Oversight Committee,  a citizen panel that monitors how CMS spends its bond money,  by school board member Richard McElrath. Davis says he missed the Bond Oversight Committee's meeting last week because he didn't realize it was coming up just two days after his appointment.

McElrath opposed the last CMS bonds,  in 2007,  before being elected to the board in 2009.  He's running for reelection this year and said he doesn't expect to take a stand for or against this year's bonds.  

Education bonds: Tax or no tax?

"No tax increase"  is one of the first things you'll hear from supporters of the bonds for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Central Piedmont Community College.

But when you see a ballot, you'll find this wording:

“SHALL the order authorizing $290,000,000 of bonds secured by a pledge of the faith and credit of the County of Mecklenburg to pay capital costs of providing school facilities, including the acquisition and construction of new school facilities, the improvement and expansion of existing school facilities and the acquisition and installation of furnishings and equipment and the acquisition of interests in real property required therefor, and a tax to be levied for the payment thereof, be approved?”

“SHALL the order authorizing $210,000,000 of bonds secured by a pledge of the faith and credit of the County of Mecklenburg to pay capital costs of providing community college facilities, including the acquisition and construction of new community college facilities, the improvement and expansion of existing community college facilities and the acquisition and installation of furnishings and equipment and the acquisition of interests in real property required therefor, and a tax to be levied for the payment thereof, be approved?”

If you plow through that dense prose  (the first item is CMS bonds, the second is for CPCC), the part about approving  "a tax to be levied for the payment thereof"  may sound like you're being asked to OK a tax hike.

That's not the case. Tax revenue will be used to repay the bonds, but that doesn't mean a tax increase.

Bonds are essentially a line of credit authorized by the voters.  As Mecklenburg County officials learned when the recession hit,  if you run up the tab on borrowing you face a painful choice:  Raise taxes and/or renege on promises made during bond campaigns.  The county slowed down on the CMS projects promised in 2007,  resulting in some that haven't been started as the 2013 campaign gears up.  They'll eventually get done  (read an update here),  but not as quickly as voters expected in 2007.

Grand Oak Elementary, a 2007 bond project, opened in August

County officials also rethought their borrowing strategy. They've calculated that they can pay back the $500 million in CMS and CPCC bonds with the revenue they've got, which means they won't have to raise property taxes to handle the debt.  The plan is to spread that borrowing over the next four years.

Here's how County Commissioner Bill James describes it:  "The question of whether a bond package causes a tax increase depends on whether the government issuing the bonds has an adequate bond fund. When I was first elected in 1996 the first item I pushed for was a bond fund. It took 15 years but we finally got one."

"The money to make the bond payments (on the bonds on the ballot) are included in the current tax rate. So, absent some sort of fiscal meltdown, these bonds should be able to be issued without any impact on existing taxes."

So, no tax hike.  The trade off is that the list of projects on the 2013 bonds for CMS is a lot shorter than district leaders would like.  Superintendent Heath Morrison, Associate Superintendent Guy Chamberlain and others are quick to note that $290 million for CMS is tiny compared with the $810 million that's on the ballot for Wake Public Schools in October or the $1.89 billion that Houston voters approved last fall.

Reshuffled list of CMS bond projects

News that the county has re-ranked the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools list of bond projects had some of you asking,  understandably,  what the new list looks like.  As of Wednesday night,  the report presented Tuesday wasn't online;  keep checking this link and it should be posted soon under "Update on proposed capital improvement and operating budget,"  with the list on page 7 of that document.

The 10 CMS projects that would be included in a three-year bond package are,  in order of county priorities:

1.  Replacing Alexander Middle School  (no. 3 on the CMS ranking).

2.  Renovating Myers Park High (no. 8).

3.  Expanding/renovating Olympic High (no. 2).

4.  Building a new preK-8 school in west Charlotte to relieve Berryhill and Reid Park (no. 5).

5.  Reopening Oakhurst and Starmount as elementary schools (no. 1).

6.  Building a new K-8 neighborhood/magnet school in east Charlotte (no. 4).

7.  Replacing Nations Ford Elementary with a new school on the Waddell Language Academy campus (no. 9).

8.  Replacing Statesville Road Elementary  (no. 16).

9.  Expanding/renovating East Mecklenburg High  (no. 10).

10.  Renovating South Mecklenburg High (no. 12).

In addition,  the CMS report says the county is willing to renovate Northwest School of the Arts (no. 7 on the CMS list) using pay-as-you-go money,  though it wouldn't be part of the bonds on the November ballot.  (Read more about the CMS proposals here.)  And a plan to add a building on Central Piedmont Community College's Harper Campus for a middle college high school,  originally no. 6 on the CMS priority list,  has been moved to the CPCC package.

If the county decides to put four years worth of projects on the November ballot,  that would add renovations at Selwyn Elementary and six preK-8 schools to the CMS list,  with renovations at Northridge Middle added to the pay-as-you-go list.

The projects that appear to be losing out are career-tech renovations at four high schools,  conversion of Davidson Elementary to a K-8 school and construction of a new K-8 magnet in the Ballantyne area.

But nothing is locked in yet.  County commissioners haven't approved a 2013 bond,  and CMS board members are trying to rally pressure for them to override county staff and stick with the CMS priorities.