Fairbanks School District Slashes Bond Proposal

School board members have cut a request for construction and maintenance money in half.

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By Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Story Created: May 18, 2011 at 10:47 AM AKDT

Story Updated: May 18, 2011 at 10:47 AM AKDT

FAIRBANKS — School board members have cut a request for construction and maintenance money in half.

The board earlier this year asked the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly to approve selling bonds to raise $61 million, but now district officials have cut that request to $29.8 million. 

The revised bonds would cover the first phase of a new school, as well as renovations and maintenance work.

The school board and Superintendent Pete Lewis had been trying to lower the bonded projects’ cost for some time, Lewis said.

In a recent meeting, borough Mayor Luke Hopkins, Lewis and school board President Kristina Brophy came up with the smaller proposal.

Gone from the projects list are the Barnette Magnet School renovation and reconstruction for $9 million, the rooftop air conditioning and energy efficiency upgrades for the Administration Center for $1.56 million and more than two-thirds the cost of constructing a new 600-student elementary school for about $21.5 million.

Barnette’s renovation was funded by the Legislature with a state grant of $9.5 million.

The revised plan calls for building the new elementary school in phases. Buying land and paying for a design — the first phase — would cost $8.5 million.

Lewis and Brophy learned the borough owns land that might be suitable for a new elementary school in North Pole. That could lower the bond amount. If the land isn’t usable, they will keep looking. 

hey said they will know whether or not it’s suitable before the June 2 Borough Assembly Finance Committee meeting.

Board member Sue Hull said the bonds’ paring was to “try to keep the demand on the taxpayers low ... while still meeting the needs of students.”

The bond resolution was sent to the Borough Assembly as a recommendation. 

“This proposal addresses our most urgent current needs,” Brophy and Lewis wrote in a memo to the Assembly. “It is also forward thinking, as it considers and incorporates future capacity needs. These are responsible requests that have projects spread across the borough.”

Superintendent Lewis said “we obviously need to talk some more” as new information and cost-cutting ideas come forward.

Contact staff writer Reba Lean at 459-7523.

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