Broken Arrow sees a challenge to wisely spend $295,000,000
If Broken Arrow passes a $295,000,000.00 school bond issue, administrators will be challenged to spend that much money in a fiscally responsible manner.
This bond package is three times the school’s annual operating budget and more than six times bigger than any previous bond issue. The vote is Dec. 8, an election date critics think was timed to produce a low voter turnout due to the holidays.
The school board acknowledged that spending that much money could cause problems when it appointed a 10-member citizens’ School Bond Oversight Committee to receive and review reports on all facets of spending the millions in bond revenues.
The committee’s mission is to look for problems within the administration and report back to the school board.
The Broken Arrow district has been mired in controversy since a former superintendent alleged that a heat/air conditioning company was doing unauthorized work for too much money. The district came under fire from Broken Arrow residents for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for a Tulsa law firm when controversy arose.
Members of the School Bond Oversight Committee (SBOC) are Max Smith, Chris Tharp, Ami Bucher, Ranae Payne, Theo Smith, Jill Norman, Susan Kiser, Todd Pendergraft, Marsha Davis, and Carter Cowan.
No current employee of the district and no currently elected officials were appointed. The committee will issue reports twice a year to the school board.
School officials insist that the $295,000,000.00 bond vote is not a tax increase. The last bond package passed by Broken Arrow was in 2006 for about $48 million. State law requires a vote to raise taxes.
It is believed that the Broken Arrow vote is the largest in the history of the State of Oklahoma.
Tulsa County Assessor Ken Yazel said that filings for household exemptions in Tulsa County have dropped almost 4 percent this year. That decline means that fewer people are living in homes that they own. Should the overall property evaluation drop in the Broken Arrow School District over the next 10 years during the bond package, homeowners would pay an even higher tax rate.
The Broken Arrow School District has some of the highest property taxes in Tulsa County and the state.
Jenks school patrons will also vote on a bond package on Dec. 8. That package is $9.8 million in new borrowing.
In 2008, Jenks passed a bond package of $154,000,000.00 - which at the time was the biggest school debt package in the history of the state. Previously, Jenks had never passed a bond package bigger than $21 million.
State law limits the borrowing capacity of schools based on the value of real property within the district. Jenks used up half of its borrowing limits in 2008 and will continue to try to pass annual property tax increases to keep debt at that ceiling.
In Jenks, these latest borrowed funds will pay for textbooks, roof repair, paint, carpet, plumbing repairs, desks, white boards, projectors, desks, books, computer software, security cameras, fire alarms, smoke detectors, copiers, buses and other items.
According to state law, schools may pass bond issues to fund only certain items - building construction, furniture and fixtures, textbooks, equipment, technology, land purchases and buses. They cannot be used to pay salaries, to hire additional staff or other operational expenses.
Jenks scheduled a school bond vote for $15,250,000 in December 2004 that failed. It broke a string of 40 successful bond votes in a row. That coincided with a $79.1 million bond issue for the Tulsa City/County Libraries to build primarily a new library downtown.
Jenks came back with a new proposal in March 2005 for $14,900,000 that passed by 74 percent.
The Jenks website trumpets: “No tax increase.”