Tuesday, June 17, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
It's a matter of political courage.
At least that's the way Clark County School District Superintendent Brian Cram sees it as he tries to gather support in the state Legislature for his 10-year campus construction financing plan.
Projections show an additional 137,386 students will stream into already-overburdened schools in the Clark County School District by 2007. That's just 40,000 shy of the district's current enrollment.
To house those students, the district estimates it will have to build 82 more schools just to keep level with the growth, which would cost an estimated $1.6 billion. Add to that rehab and modernization needs and the district is projecting a $2.2 billion, 10-year construction price tag.
Cram doesn't think the public will take kindly to approving another school bond issue on the heels of the $605 million bond approved in 1994 and the $643 million bond approved in 1996, let alone a $2.2 billion bond.
"For the last bond issue, we really needed $1 billion," Cram said. "But as we went out to focus groups and the public, we found out we couldn't even say the 'B' word."
Public sentiment demands the Legislature take responsibility for financing school construction, he says.
"If the Legislature thinks they're going to return home to a less-than-hostile public if they don't, well ...
"The bottom line? Political courage," he declared.
And as the 1997 Legislature enters its final weeks of lawmaking, Cram and other school district lobbyists are waging a campaign to give the district a fighting chance for a three-pronged tax package to guarantee a steady income to build schools as they are needed.
"We're trying to sell to people that this is the way to do it," Cram said.
The main points of the plan:
* Freezing the current property tax rate and continuing to receive the $38.74 for each $100,000 in assessed valuation on a home, which was assessed to pay for the 1996 school bond. In 2003, when the bond is paid off, it would begin generating about $130 million annually.
* Rerouting real estate transfer tax and hotel room tax increases to the school district for construction needs. The real estate transfer tax would generate about $10 million annually and the hotel room tax would put about $32 million annually into the school district's building coffers.
* Establish a financial oversight committee comprised of business and community leaders to monitor the money raised by the above two methods.
If the plan clears the hurdles in the Legislature, in six years the school district would have a construction fund of about $170 million annually.
Beyond 2003, Cram said, it is impossible to calculate how much the fund would generate, because it would depend on how much the assessed valuation on property increases.
Mike Alastuey, head of business and finance for the school district, said the plan came about after the county's Debt Management Commission denied Part B of the 1996 school bond because of the danger of exceeding the county's tax ceiling if voters approved the plan.
Originally, the school bond had a $643 million Part A and a $173 million Part B. Part A, which was the dollar amount the voters ultimately approved, had a $38.47 yearly tax increase per $100,000 assessed valuation.
Part B had an additional $16.07 yearly tax increase on a $100,000 home, which would bring the total increase to $54.54 a year. The Debt Management Commission ruled that if approved by the voters, it would leave little room for issuing bonds for other infrastructure needs. The commission ruled that the school district had to go back to the drawing board and present a more acceptable bond package.
In the end, portions of Part A and B were collapsed and others were worked into a single bond package worth $643 million.
"'Everybody walked away from that table knowing we had better come back with a plan for the long term," Alastuey said.
While the plan looks like it will sail through the Assembly Infrastructure Committee when it meets Wednesday, it's expected to run into problems in the Senate.
Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, has said he opposes the plan because it's unconstitutional to pass legislation that would benefit only one county. Courts in other states, including Arizona, have seen it the same way.
One supporter of the school district plan, Sen. Jon Porter, R-Boulder City, proposes approving the plan this session and putting the money into a trust fund. Then, he says, figure out how to avoid constitutional challenges in the 1999 Legislature.
Other legislators have criticized the bond roll-over.
When voters approved the '96 school bond, they did so with the understanding that their property taxes could go down once the bonds were paid off. The school district's plan to freeze the current property tax rate means homeowners would continue to pay the $38.74 per $100,000 assessed valuation for at least the next 10 years.
The Assembly Infrastructure Committee meeting will be teleconferenced to the Sawyer State Office Building in Las Vegas at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday.
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