Saline schools bond Q&A: Supporters say it would protect and secure district's facilities

AnnArbor.com conducted the following Q&A with Superintendent Scot Graden to discuss why the district believes the bond proposal is necessary.

• Read the Q&A from the other side: Saline schools bond Q&A: Opponents say 'we can't afford it'

Q: Why does the district need this bond extension?

A: From our standpoint, it’s pushed to come up now for two reasons. One, we did a financial study in 2009 as to the infrastructure needs of the district and identified about $30 million in need, and part of that can be addressed with our sinking fund — we have about $500,000 in sinking fund dollars.

The remainder are really focusing on the fact that we own and possess about $200 million in fixed assets, and ultimately, we need to continue to invest in those in order to maintain their value and provide the environment we want to provide.

The now portion of it does come in to play because we have the opportunity for an extension rather than an immediate increase — that really was the other driver in terms of getting feedback from the community after the August bond that went down.

Q: What are some of the projects this would fund?

A: About 75 percent of it is going to go toward what we call infrastructure needs. Really, you’re talking some roofing systems, heating and cooling adjustments. This building (Liberty School) is still steam heat; we'll convert it to hot water, which is more efficient. Some of our other buildings have fin boilers — we’d convert to EVO boilers, which are more efficient. It would save us energy costs and allow us to better manage the temperatures in those buildings.

There are some configuration issues around the elementary offices. With elementary buildings built now, you have to go through the office in order to get into the buildings and Harvest is almost like that and was built in 2002, Woodland and Heritage are close but would need some reconfiguration, and Pleasant Ridge you have to find the office, it’s kind of hard to find, so that’s the building that would receive the most from a renovation standpoint.

About 10 percent for technology and about half of that 10 percent, about $2 million, toward devices — literally computers, SMART board type devices and then half would be network upgrades to allow us to provide robust wireless everywhere so students who bring their own devices can get onto the network.

Q: There are people saying, “We voted no in August, why are you bringing this back now, we already spoke.” How do you respond to that?

A: The feedback analysis we did of the voters — and we didn’t ask them whether they voted yes or no, we asked what their rationale was for voting — and almost to a person they said, “We didn’t know what it was going to go for.” Many people didn’t even know it was going to be on the ballot. If you look at the actual voter rolls, about 7,650 people voted in the primary and 5,400 voted on the ballot proposal, so about 2,200 people went to the polls and didn’t vote on it.

It came back in February because we didn’t want to bring this back in another year and the board really thought, and articulated this in a couple meetings, that they really thought they’d be doing a disservice if we tried to politically create a gap between the votes, when in reality this is our last chance to do it without increasing our tax rate.

Q: What happens if the millage fails?

A: These are the types of things we’re going to need to do regardless of what happens. If we’re going to continue to provide transportation, we’re going to have to buy new buses. We need to upgrade our network, we need to provide 21st century learning environments, we need to put new roofs on our buildings, and those resources need to come from somewhere.

Our capital needs, along with decreasing state revenues, becomes a double whammy to address, so if we don’t have access to a bond, I really see our competitiveness as a district going down.

Kyle Feldscher covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com.