by Garrick Moritz, Gazette
This Special Meeting of the Garretson School Board was all about future planning. The two topics for discussion were a possible tax opt out and the plans to renovate the athletic complex where football, track and soccer are hosted.
“In a lot of ways, these projects are tied together,” said School Board President Shannon Nordstrom. “We can’t really move forward with one, if we don’t make some progress on the other. Under state law, we’re allowed to dip into some of our Capital Outlay funds to supplement our General Fund balance, but if we make the repairs and renovations we need at the complex, then we will have less of the Capital Outlay funds for discretionary purposes.”
Jessica Satiroff of Infrastructure Design Group gave a large presentation to the board. Phil Gundvaldson, also of Infrastructure Design, was present to answer questions.
Infrastructure Design Group was the original engineer on the project when the complex was built, which means they have firsthand knowledge of the ground and the project’s history.
Satiroff’s presentation was extremely detailed, listing everything from the different types of turf available to the solutions to the soil problems that have been uncovered since the facility was built. Superintendent Guy Johnson and Athletic Director Kevin Steckler also fielded questions and made comments about the state of the field. In essence, the field has had drainage, swelling, dipping and rut incidents. They have made patchwork repairs to keep the field safe for use, but it has been an issue and repairs have been needed every year on a constant basis for several years now. This, combined with cracks in the concrete that the school’s insurance provider has mandated that the school fix as soon as possible, means that work will have to be done soon.
“Don’t get us wrong, it’s still a great facility, but these issues aren’t’ going away and will only get worse,” said Johnson.
Satiroff laid out all the options and her company’s recommendations for soil replacement and material reinforcing fill that would mitigate the problems. The project will also include installation of a sidewalk and the erection of new bleachers on the guest side of the field. Options for a new scoreboard and improvements to the parking lot were also discussed.
“It’s plain for all our patrons to see, that any time we have significant rain, the parking lot becomes a washed-out mess,” said Supt. Johnson.
Options from more dirt being added, to more gravel to even asphalting all or just some of the lot were on the table, though the board didn’t like the pricing for asphalt. The engineers from Infrastructure Design Group agreed that much of the soil that would be removed from the field could be directly utilized in the parking lot.
Satiroff gave the board a full range of cost estimates, from bare bones of fixing what was required to maximum quality repairs and renovations. The total prices ranged from $1.2 million to $2.3 million for the project.
Her firm’s recommendation of the options on the table was to use Vertex Prime FTVT-65 turf, (at an estimated cost of $558,600) and to subgrade using the option #6 she laid out, which would be to subcut (remove) 16 inches of soil below the bottom of the turf, placing geotextile fabric, and fill with 16 inches of granular base course at an estimated cost of $230,100. (This includes putting the excised dirt as fill for the parking lot.)
New drainage would likewise be installed, with two drains going the whole length of the field (estimated cost of $28,300). Concrete repairs to the existing facility ($16,900), new sidewalk to the guest section ($68,500), and the addition of angle frame bleachers to the guest side ($63,500). Her firm also recommended a new scoreboard ($250k, which included a live video option) and gravel with grading added to the parking lot ($297,500).
As to how it should be bid out, Satiroff recommended a base bid package which would remove and replace turf, resurface the track and perform the concrete repairs. The base bid package would have an estimated cost of $1,527,800. An alternate bid package with their secondary priorities would be for visitor bleachers, a visitor walkway, scoreboard and parking lot. The total additional cost for the alternates package, which did not include parking lot estimations, would be $450,900.
This puts the total estimated cost of the project somewhere between $1.5 million to $1.978 million, depending on how the alternates shake out, and not including gravel work in the parking lot.
Supt. Johnson said this will be a topic for discussion and debate over the next several months, but that if the board wanted to move forward on the project, voting to put out the bids by the December meeting should be their aim, as then the district would get the best prices possible as contractors were working to fill out their summer schedule.
Next, the board discussed the potential opt out for the district. Supt. Johnson gave the board a large presentation that he and business manager Jacob Schweitzer had prepared.
This is a topic that has been covered many times in this newspaper and much of this summary was given over to the explanation of the history and details of the district’s past opt outs.
In brief, the state funding and educational per student & per teacher formula is more or less broken and the legislature is in no hurry to fix it, as the system favors school consolidation. By law, school operates with three funds, Capital Outlay, General Fund and Special Education funds. The county, state and federal governments set these funds, and control how much money the school gets and how the funds are used. Because the funding system from the state is not a fix all, many schools in South Dakota (42% of them) choose to do a tax opt-out. Garretson is one of the schools that is just on the cusp of being in a bracket that could get more dollars in state funding, but falls short.
“We’ve definitely been here before,” said Board president Nordstrom. “We’re about in the same place that we were back in 2016. We’re not in full blown panic mode yet, but we are deficit spending again. We made real and discernable progress in fiscal responsibility and student enrollment increases for several years, but factors beyond our control over the last two years, like the pandemic, set our student numbers back. We did get a lot of supplemental dollars for our general fund because of the pandemic, and we used that money effectively. Our first opt-out was for $500k. We did that for two years, and then were able to take less, which was appreciated by our patrons. When that opt-out expired we passed another one, and brought it to a vote. We won that vote by a single vote, but the election did have procedural issues. Rather than have any question to its integrity, we asked a judge to have it annulled and voided. The pandemic was terrible, but financially it did help the district supplement its general fund. Now we find ourselves back in familiar territory. I’m hopeful for the future. Looking at our student numbers in the elementary, we’ve got a large group of kids coming up in kindergarten. With the added housing projects in Garretson, the new daycare facility and its expansion, we’re confident and hopeful our student numbers will continue to increase over time.”
This year there was a net loss in student numbers overall and that also has played a contributing factor.
Supt. Johnson said that the soonest the board could pass an opt-out resolution would be the January meeting, the first meeting of 2023 for the district. He also shared the following numbers based on current valuations in the district.
For every $100,000 in opt out, the levy would be: Ag property - $0.138 / $1,000. Owner-Occupied - $0.309 / $1,000. Other (business and utilities) - $0.639 / $1,000. Ag valuations are based on a somewhat complicated formula that includes an olympic average of the gross productivity of the land. Using this formula and data from the Dept of Revenue, farm land in our district is valued at $2,884 per acre. Using these figures, it would translate into each hundred thousand in opt out requiring taxes of $0.397 per acre.
Though the district may pass a tax opt-out resolution without a public vote, Board President Nordstrom said that he felt the board should not even consider doing so.
“Speaking for myself, I don’t think it makes any sense to me not to have a public vote, and I don’t think I could ever support not having a public vote on this issue.” he said. “The public has supported us in the past and I think will do so again. We made mistakes last time we had an opt-out vote certainly, but we learned from those mistakes and will not repeat them. I would love to see us make progress on both of these issues in the coming months.”
As the purpose of the meeting was informational and presentational, they came to the end of the night and adjourned.
Documentation from both presentations is available at the school office for anyone to claim and there are copies available at the Gazette office as well.
