School district facing $17 million shortfall for upkeep

Nye County School District Superintendent Dale Norton said this week there are more than $17 million in various construction and renovation projects that need immediate attention within the district.

“That’s just to do roofs, parking lots, infrastructure and upgrading technology,” he said.

Nearly every campus throughout the 18,182 square mile county is in desperate need of many interior and exterior repairs, with little money to cover the overall costs.

The situation, Norton said, was exacerbated last month when Nye County voters rejected a bond question that would have helped to address the projects following the Nov. 4 General Election.

The question was simple enough.

“Shall the Nye County School District be authorized to continue to issue general obligation school bonds to finance the acquisition, construction, improvement and equipping of school facilities?”

School district officials hoped voters would support the question, by extending the current bonds by 10 years.

Had voters said “yes” on the question, it would have permitted the district, with the approval of the Nye County Debt Management Commission, to continue issuing the bonds between the date of authorization and Nov. 4, 2024.

Norton, however, lamented that voters rejected the bond question, which now prevents the district from issuing the bonds, which are used to fund various Capital Improvement Projects within the district.

The action also eliminates or reduces the district’s property tax levy for school bonds.

Norton said he believed many voters were confused about the school bond question because of another question on the ballot which pertained to the margin tax.

On Question 3, he suggested that voters believed erroneously the school bond question would have also raised their taxes.

“Question 1 was not an additional tax that will be put on anybody’s tax bill,” Norton said. “It is currently active right now. In order for the school district to continue to move forward with repairs and the equipping of schools not just in Pahrump, but across the entire district.”

To add insult to injury, Norton said a campus up north suffered severe damage following a severe storm that swept through the area this week.

“In Gabbs there were 100 mile per hour winds and guess what? We had windows blown out,” he said. “The brand new roof was also torn off.”

At least one school in the northern district needs to be replaced.

“In Tonopah, we don’t have any air conditioning in the elementary school up there,” he said. “Our dilemma right now is, do we put air conditioning in which is going to cost us power? The Tonopah campus is an old structure that we really need to abandon. That school is over 50 years old.”

Aside from campuses that are in need of repairs, district offices are also overdue for renovations and upgrades.

Officials want an additional modular building at the southern district site on West Street at a cost of $160,000.

Heating and air conditioning retrofits will cost $140,000, while work on the roof and asphalt resurfacing are expected to run roughly $75,000 and $50,000 respectively.

Repairs at the district’s Transportation and Maintenance building alone, stand at $116,000.

In the southern attendance area alone, costs for completing the projects are expected to exceed $8,428,000.

All told, the grand total for the entire district, according to district officials, stands at $17,736, 370.

Norton did provide some hope for addressing some of the more pressing projects within the district for the time being.

“Right now we’re okay because we still have bonding capacity up until the 2016 election,” he said. “We’ll bond as close as we can until that question and we hope that we’ll get it renewed.”

During the Board of Trustees’ most recent meeting last week, board members considered the possibility of selling a bond to address a few of the issues, but the item died for lack of a motion.

Also during the meeting, trustees voted to approve the hiring of a teacher at Hafen Elementary, which passed unanimously.

The district needs close to a dozen more educators to fill teaching vacancies, mostly in the southern county area.

The Nevada Association of School Superintendents is pushing a new initiative, “iNVest in education,” which outlines the actions to be taken to improve education in the state’s 17 school districts, Norton said.