Bond or Bust?
As my colleague Rachel Keith reported earlier this week, New Hanover County commissioners and school board members met and agreed on a $320.5 million bond package to update and add new public school facilities. The bond covers a lot, but not all, of the district’s needs; many years of deferred maintenance have left over a half-billion dollars in unmet needs. For just one example, the bond includes only the first of several phases of long-overdue rehab and expansion projects at New Hanover High School, leaving roughly $170 million to be funded down the line … somehow … (pause while elected officials gaze with frustrated longing in the general direction of The Endowment).
Hammering all this out was no small feat, balancing the most serious maintenance needs with a realpolitik acknowledgement that a bond will have to appeal to a broad range of voters around the county. The school board should get credit for this work, and I specifically give kudos to Pat Bradford, who headed up the bond committee. Commissioners also deserve credit for not trying to value engineer the school board’s work, trusting them to ask for what they think the district needs.
That doesn’t mean that voters will agree, though. I don’t expect any hassle with Local Government Commission approval in the spring, but who knows what the economic climate will be a year from now – and how voters will feel about a tax increase (about $100 a year for the median $580,000 property for the first decade of repayment, dropping off in the latter half of a 20-year bond)…