District, Borough at odds over unspent funds

Frontiersman

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough School Board will again try to decide what to do with the remainder of a $2.3 million energy supplement from the Alaska Legislature when it meets Wednesday.

The decision has been tied up as school board members attempt to negotiate a deal with the Mat-Su Borough Assembly to waive a rule requiring half the unspent money to be given to the Borough if it’s not spent by June 30, the end of fiscal year 2008.

That issue seems to be a source of tension between the school board and assembly. Both sides have claimed a lack of understanding by the other, with some assembly members expressing confusion over the school board’s indecision about the money. District 7 Assemblyman Tom Kluberton called the board’s apparent indecision ludicrous in a May 19 interview.

A one-time grant, the Legislature passed down the energy supplement allocation to offset high energy costs. The money, however, is not limited to specific energy use and can be applied to non-recurring expenses.

So far, the board has spent close to $1.52 million on items ranging from a third lane for exiting Cottonwood Creek Elementary to repairs done after a recent spree of vandalism at Willow Elementary School, among others. The items come from a list of recommendations by the district administration. The school board must still decide on which of the remaining items, if any, to spend the allocation.

For right now, according to school board member Jim Colver, the board is waiting to see what the assembly will do.

“If we have to spend it by the end of the year, we’ll make a decision on June 18,” Colver said.

The school board has a chance to keep the entire leftover amount if an ordinance penned by Assemblyman Rob Wells passes before the end of fiscal year 2008.

The one-time deal would only be for FY08, unless the assembly makes another change in the interim, Wells said.

Wells has a long history working with this issue. While serving on the assembly in the 1990s, Wells said he had concerns about school district spending and amended the Borough’s ordinance that had allowed the district to keep 100 percent of the leftover funds, changing it to a 50/50 split.

Now, Wells said he believes the district should be able to keep 100 percent of lapsed funding to a certain point, such as 3 percent to 5 percent of its annual budget, to use in case of emergencies.

“As the body that has the ability to tax — the assembly — we want to have confidence in where the public’s tax dollars are being allocated,” Wells said.

With the possibility of Wells’ ordinance, Colver said it might not be wise for the school district to rush into spending the remainder of its allocation.

“We could go ahead … and spend it right now,” Colver said. “But how does that look when they’re offering to let us use it?”

Wednesday’s meeting of the Mat-Su Borough School Board begins at 6 p.m. in the Palmer High School Upper Library.