Assembly stalls on how to handle school money

PALMER — An attempt to change the way leftover school district money is divvied up failed to pass muster at the borough assembly meeting Tuesday.

Each year, money leftover at the district is split 50-50 between the district and the borough’s fund for school site selection.

Assemblyman Rob Wells came to Tuesday’s meeting with a proposal to change that. In his ordinance, the district could keep the first $1 million and the borough would get the remainder. The district could also put its share of the lapsed funds into a reserve fund, where it could build up a maximum of $5 million.

Jim Colver, president of the school board, said that he supported the measure.

“This is a good, reasonable approach,” he said. Of the school site selection fund, he added, “it is a good and useful fund and I would encourage you to continue funding it.”

Wells pointed out that he wasn’t asking the assembly to give the district more money. In some years, for instance those when there was more than $2 million left over, the district would actually have had less money under the new plan. Four of the last 10 years saw more than $2 million left over, Wells said.

Assemblywoman Michelle Church, looking at the numbers for the past 10 years, said it appeared to her that the district would actually end up, on average, with less money.

Wells said mostly what the measure does is allow the district more certainty in planning its budget.

“Really this is a pretty modest piece of legislation. A modest start toward recognizing that the school district ought to have some amount of certainty,” Wells said.

Assemblywoman Cindy Bettine said she couldn’t support the measure if it came at the cost of the site selection fund.

“We are putting ourselves back into the same situation of knowing we don’t have the money to pay for school sites,” she said.

Wells argued that Anchorage often goes out for bonds to pay for land on which to build schools and there’s no reason the borough can’t. On school bonds, the state reimburses a healthy percentage of the money.

To that, Bettine said she didn’t think it right to think the state will be able to reimburse the majority of school bonds forever.

Assemblyman Pete Houston said that since the site selection fund is important, the assembly should look at other ways to get money into it.

“We need to have other ways to fund it besides just counting on lapsed funds from the school district,” he said.

One piece of the legislation did seem to gain something close to universal agreement — the district should be able to hold money in a reserve account. Right now, the lapsed money has to be counted as revenue and therefore spent over the subsequent year.

After the measure failed, with Houston, Wells and Tom Kluberton in support, Bettine asked borough Manager John Duffy to draw up a new ordinance that doesn’t change the way the money is split but lets the district set up a reserve.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.