Last week, the Anchorage School Board approved using $11 million to pay for urgently needed capital projects without selling additional bonds. The good news is that some projects proposed for bond funding in the April election can be done without bonds. This good news, however, has been overshadowed by a legitimate question: Why did the Anchorage School District ask to bond for them if this money was available?
The answer lies in new legal advice about how fast we must spend money raised from previously issued bonds. The advice required us to quickly find projects for $11 million of proceeds from those bonds and interest on that money.
Our prior practice was to use bond money, and any interest earned on it, to make sure the balloted and related projects are 100 percent completed before considering any other use of the funds. Only if we had money left over would we then use it on other projects, as allowed by the ballot language for all bond propositions. That policy has maximized the district's ability to get bond-funded projects fully and correctly completed, as voters approved.
We received the new legal advice in mid-March, long after this year's $26 million school maintenance bond had been approved to appear on the April ballot. Had we known about the new deadline, the administration would not have recommended, and the board would not have approved, bonding for many of the projects.
Following bond counsel's new guidance, the district will begin to allocate bond interest earnings to urgently needed projects, without waiting for the projects listed in the bond to be closed out first. Bond funds will still go first to the projects that were listed on the ballot. The district will also sell bonds in smaller, more frequent increments than in the past, to make sure we use the proceeds within the required deadlines.
The newly approved $11 million is not "found" money, as has been suggested. Each month, the district provides the School Board a publicly available financial recap that shows the outstanding balances for all capital projects, as well as interest earnings. The money in question was always included in these reports.
As a result of the change in bond counsel advice, the school board must review its policy for using bond proceeds and interest earnings. ASD's priority has been to honor its good-faith commitment to the voters who approve school bonds. The district and board understand their responsibility to be both prudent and clear with the community as to the use of tax-supported bonds and interest earnings.
Carol Comeau is superintendent of the Anchorage School District. John Steiner is president of the Anchorage School Board.
By CAROL COMEAU and JOHN STEINER