Highland gets facilities ball rolling … slowly

RIVERSIDE — A group of 27 Highland school officials, staff, parents and other community members met early last week to discuss upcoming facility plans for the district.

"Upcoming“ may be too strong a word, however; a bond issue to pay for any planned improvements won’t hit ballots for over two years. Superintendent Ken Crawford said he expected school officials to pitch a finalized facility improvement plan to voters in November of 2025.

“We’re going a slow roll with this, we don’t want to rush the process, we want a thorough background,” Crawford said. “We’re going to take two years to get this the way we want it to look … when we put that bond issue out there, we’re going to ask for some money, and we want to get the facilities the best they possibly can be for our students and their education, and make the community proud.”

This early in the process, possibilities abound. Crawford said the 90-minute meeting Aug. 28 touched on the potential for parking improvements, a second gym, an auditorium, boilers, a new locker room, and several other potential projects.

With an information-gathering meeting out of the way, Crawford said the next steps of the process would break down into a financial planning phase, followed by more idea generation. After that, decision-makers will need to narrow down the scope of improvement plans, then nitpick over fine details and engineering decisions until a price is finalized and a bond referendum put into writing.

Another reason for the far-out timeline is the district’s current bond payments. Crawford said 2026 would mark the end of payments for a 2019, $3.7 million bond issue that financed an HVAC system and playground improvements. That means a 2025 bond vote, if approved by the community, could pay for improvements without raising local taxes.

“We’re trying to be aware of the cost of living in today’s time, and not trying to put too much strain on our taxpayers,” Crawford said. “We’re going to be paying off (the 2019 bond issue) early, we’ve been paying extra on it so we can reduce our interest payments on it … if we vote in 2025, the new tax rate won’t come in until July, so one goes off, another one comes on.”

The planned improvements could shoot for a much higher dollar amount if the district took a longer time frame to pay off the debt. Crawford said that was a likely strategy.

“This one was only a nine-year bond, so we’ll have a little bit more leeway” Crawford said. “We’ll have a lot more flexibility with a 20-year bond. You can bond for more money if you take longer to pay it off … it’s not quite apples to apples.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com