FORT SMITH -- The Fort Smith School Board has told staff members to move ahead with the development of a nearly $78 million capital improvement program that will require asking voters for a 3-mill property tax increase, the School Board's president said Friday.
A millage vote has not been scheduled and won't be until around the September 2016 school election, President Deanie Mehl said Friday. In the meantime, the school district will complete a master facilities plan, and determine how much state and federal funding would be available for the project.
A memorandum on the project from Fort Smith School District Superintendent Benny Gooden said he anticipates seeking facilities partnership money from the state in the 2017-19 funding cycle.
But, Mehl said, "We will have to have a millage passed. There's no way we can do this without it."
The property tax rate for the school district in Fort Smith is 36.5 mills. A mill is one-tenth of a cent. Each mill is charged against each dollar of assessed value and would produce $1 of tax for each $1,000 of valuation.
Gooden said Friday that the project is needed because the district is running out of space for its students.
"We've not seen the runaway growth they have in Northwest Arkansas, but it's been a slow and steady growth," he said. "That's the hardest kind to manage because it's not so easy to see."
He said three secondary schools have run out of space -- Southside High School, and Kimmons and Ramsey junior high schools -- and others are reaching capacity.
The School Board voted Monday as a Committee of the Whole to authorize planning of the facilities project.
Among the projects is the construction of tornado shelters for the district's two high schools, at an estimated cost of $6.4 million. Mehl said the district probably would seek funding for the shelters from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Tornado shelters have been built for the other 23 schools in the district, but not the two high schools. Mehl said she considers the shelters a priority for the protection of the students and the community. All of the shelters are opened to the public when tornado sirens sound in Fort Smith.
Overall, the list of projects includes work on five schools.
Expansion of Southside High School, according to Gooden's memorandum, would add classroom space and would develop a new entrance, administration service area and a media center "to become the focal point of the main building."
The project also would include the addition of a lecture hall, expansion and renovation of the cafeteria, and the addition of a large group rehearsal space for band and orchestra students.
The cost of the work at Southside is estimated at $9.5 million, Gooden's memo stated.
Expansion and renovation work at Kimmons and Ramsey junior high schools was estimated to cost $19 million.
Of that total, $13 million would be devoted to improvements at Ramsey, including the addition of a second floor, Mehl said.
"Ramsey may be the most critical of our facilities in terms of crowding," Gooden wrote in his memo.
Two elementary schools, Cook and Trusty, also would have additions and renovations at an estimated total cost of $2.8 million.
The project also includes the construction of two events complexes -- a performing arts center and a multipurpose arena -- that would be available to all schools, something Mehl said she believed would be unique for Arkansas. Together, they are estimated to cost $40 million.
Building large centralized facilities would be expensive but would eliminate the greater expense of providing individual facilities for each school, Mehl said.
"The district has needed good facilities for our performing groups and indoor events for a long time," Gooden said Friday.
Mehl said there has been some opposition to the proposed complexes. Some people in the community have argued that the district could make more use of the Stubblefield Center at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and the Fort Smith Convention Center.
The district is submitting applications to the Federal Aviation Administration for a long-term lease of land for the event complexes on Fort Smith Regional Airport property. The site is north of the terminal near Phoenix Avenue and South 74th Street, Mehl said.
The School Board decided to seek the improvements to the schools after putting plans for the construction of a third high school "on permanent hold," Mehl said.
Gooden said in the memo that the district could miss out on the opportunity to build a third high school on land donated by the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority at Chaffee Crossing, but "it is quite clear that a base of adequate support for such a project is lacking at this time."
Officials had hoped a third high school would allow for the redistribution of student space to ease overcrowding throughout the district. Gooden said since a third high school no longer is an option, the additional space has to be built into the existing schools.
Mehl said a consultant hired by the district reported earlier this year that the rate of the school district's growth did not support the need for a third high school.
State Desk on 06/28/2015