THE PLAINS, Ohio — For the second time in six years, Athens and The Plains residents will decide whether to pass a multimillion-dollar bond issue for Athens City Schools.
Athens City School District is asking voters to pass a $24 million bond issue for the district to build a new high school. The new high school was initially slated to be completed with funding from a $60.5 million bond issue voters passed in 2018. That bond issue supported the district’s work toward a master plan, which has seen several buildings renovated or replaced.
However, the district now says it needs additional funding to finish delivering on its plan — primarily because of cost increases resulting from inflation, according to Athens City Schools Superintendent Tom Gibbs.
“No one could have predicted the pandemic in 2018, nor the rapid and significant inflation that followed,” Gibbs said in an email.
The bond would be repaid over 30 years through an annual property tax levy estimated to average 2.06 mills for each $1 of taxable value — or $72 for each $100,000 of appraised value.
Property owners will see a lower net increase in property taxes supporting the district, however, because a bond levy passed by voters in 1999, equivalent to 1.19 mills, will expire after its final collection in 2024. In August, the Athens City School District Board of Education passed a resolution not to collect on the tax in 2024, to provide property owners some relief, Gibbs said. The tax would kick in starting in 2025, Gibbs said.
If voters approve the measure, property owners in the district would see a net increase of $30.45/year in property taxes for every $100,000 of total appraised value, Gibbs said.
Still, property tax burdens increased for district residents with the 2018 levy, and have continued to increase due to increasing property values. New appraisals released by the Athens County Auditor’s office show an increase of 20%, WOUB recently reported.
Athens City School District has the highest property tax rate in the county, at 60.93 mills. The next nearest is Alexander Local Schools, with 35.46 mills. Both Athens and Alexander also benefit from a 1% income tax; the income tax for Athens City Schools is set to expire in 2028.
Voters have approved 15 tax levies for Athens City Schools since 1969. All but two of them are continuing levies, with no expiration date.
A new high school
In 2014, the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission assessed Athens City Schools buildings for needed improvements. The cost of the recommended renovations was more than two-thirds of the cost to fully replace the building, so the OFCC recommended replacing the building, according to a presentation prepared by the school district.
Among other issues, the OFCC concluded in a building assessment for Athens High School, obtained by the Independent through a records request, that the district needs to replace the school’s roof and electrical and heating systems.
Gibbs said the building suffers from many issues that affect student experience. These include limited natural light, with some rooms lacking windows; noise, as multiple classrooms are constructed out of partitions; and heating issues, with some rooms too cold and others too hot.
School board member Sean Parsons, who also chairs the Athens County Democratic Party, told the Independent, “The high school needs an extraordinary amount of work.”
“I travel a lot through the region for various things, including my kids athletics, and we regularly see facilities that are much better than ours,” Parsons said. “I’m definitely supportive of working to help our students get the type of facilities that they deserve and need to learn in.”
Why a $24 million bond?
To construct a building with square footage and amenities aligned with state recommendations would cost just under $37.9 million, according to estimates from Schorr Architects that the district shared with the Independent.
About $28.6 million will come from a state match for the district’s entire master plan through the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission’s Classroom Facilities Assistance Program. The district has about $6 million left from its 2018 bond issue to use for the project as well.
That leaves the district just a little over $3 million shy of the funding it would need for the project.
However, Parsons said the state recommendation doesn’t include enough square footage to keep all high school students in the building. The state encouraged the district to move some students from the high school to the middle school “because we technically have oversized space at the middle school,” Parsons said. This was an issue the district didn’t anticipate in 2018.
Parsons said the middle school does not have space to accommodate all of ninth grade, and said splitting the grade between buildings is not logically feasible or optimal for student learning.
In order to accommodate all current high school students, the district would need additional square footage, which adds over $4.8 million to the resources the district is requesting, according to the Schorr Architects estimate.
The district also planned to fund additional school building amenities with the 2018 levy that aren’t reflected in the portion of the project matched by the state. According to the Schorr Architects estimate, these locally funded initiatives include a large competition gym, a gym balcony, athletic storage, weight room, wrestling facilities, a stage, auditorium house, drama storage, wood shop, ag shop and student commons. The additional projects will now cost the district over $9.7 million, according to the estimate.
Schorr Architects also projects a $2.8 million increase in overall construction costs from current projections due to ongoing inflation.
This year, the school board also decided to add an auxiliary gym to its proposed project, at a cost of nearly $3 million. The auxiliary gym will allow the school to host more athletic practices and events, Parsons said.
“The idea behind it is just providing more of these spaces that help our students be able to participate in more things and more easily,” Parsons said.
The costs of additional square footage, locally funded initiatives, projected construction cost increases and the auxiliary gym bring the total for the whole project to the $24 million the district is asking voters to approve this year.
Voter responses
Some voters feel $24 million is too much to ask, especially coming on the heels of the 2018 bond issue. Alan McMillan, an owner of the rental company Cranberry Row LLC, circulated a video earlier this month arguing against the issue. Shortly thereafter, Parsons published his own video.
McMillan told the Independent he feels the district mismanaged the funds from the 2018 bond issue.
“They say ‘well no one could have predicted what happened with hyperinflation,’” McMillan said. “Well guess what? The community is living with hyperinflation.”
Cranberry Row LLC owns 25 properties in Athens County with appraised value totaling over $4.4 million, according to information available through the Athens County Auditor.
McMillan isn’t the only one with concerns. His video had about 1,200 views when this story was published.
“So tired of these prop tax increases,” school district resident Linda Hiller said in a Facebook comment. “Not only will rents go up again, but it will continue to be difficult for retirees to live in Athens county, due to such high property taxes. I am voting against it.”
“I think many times students and tenants have a tendency to vote for all the (levies), not realizing that this will cause rents to go up,” Hiller told the Independent.
McMillan said rather than creating an additional tax burden for voters, the school district should use the $6 million from the last levy to fund partial improvements to the building. McMillan said the district should make the most of the building’s “useful life.”
Parsons said using the money on partial renovations wouldn’t go far enough, however.
Using $6 million for renovations would “solve a few problems for a little while,” Parsons said. “But then what are we going to do in 10 years, you know? Our systems are at the end of their life. It’s not a modern building.”
Parsons said replacing the building’s roof alone would use up nearly half of the school’s remaining funding from the 2018 bond issue.
For McMillan, that’s tough luck for the school board: “You’ve asked for a gargantuan amount of money from voters. You got it … They got it the last time.” McMillan said the district should have planned better going into the project and, despite the pandemic and issues of inflation, should not have been so far off base in its initial projections. He called on the district to come up with a “plan B.”
For some voters, what happened last time isn’t relevant, however.
“Whatever happened with the last money is done,” said Jennifer Woody Collins, Athens resident and parent of a third grader at East Elementary, in a Facebook comment. “The HS especially needs improvements—it’s not an option to just ignore that. If you vote no, I’m interested in alternative ideas to fund this necessary work.”
McMillan questioned whether all the work proposed by the district is necessary, however. He criticized the district’s addition of an auxiliary gym to the project, when it is already asking voters for so much money.
“All of a sudden $21 (million) turns into $24 (million),” he said. “It starts to sound like spending somebody else’s money. And the money is the voters’, and in this small community.”
Access to state funding
In order to begin work on the facility construction and renovations it proposed in 2018, the district entered into an Expedited Local Partnership Program, where the district fronts the full cost of beginning work “based on the promise that the state will provide their share at a later date,” Gibbs said.
This promise confused some voters in the 2018 election. Now, the district is once again telling voters that they need to pass a bond issue in order to access the same funding promised in 2018.
“In order to access those funds, we have to be able to show that we have the money on hand to finish the entire pre-K through 12 project, which is why there is a levy on the ballot,” Gibbs said.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the district’s access to state matching funding, said OFCC Chief of Communications Anne Yeager. Records obtained by the Independent confirm that OFCC has recommended the district’s conditional approval for funding.
In his video, McMillan criticized the district for repeating its claim from 2018 in this election, that money is needed from voters in order to access state matching funds.
Gibbs said in an email that the ACSD board of education “would certainly prefer not to go back to voters to ask for additional funding, however, in order to complete the master plan that was approved by the board in 2018 and to gain access to the state matching funds, it is necessary to ask voters for additional support at this time.”
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