More than a few times, sticker shock has been the death of a car sale.
Driven by the demise of a long-owned clunker or perhaps by dreams of owning the latest, greatest model, most all of us have had the experience. Drop by the car lot, become dazzled by all those shiny new rides, start fantasizing about driving down the open road with windows down and radio blaring ... then we walk around to the side of the vehicle where the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price is listed.
What’s the point?
Bentonville School Board members can hardly be blamed for hesitating to join a collaboration of four school districts for a $21 million career center.
The full fantasy may not fade until we're pulling that old clunker back into our driveway, but fade it will. When something costs too much, it costs too much, at least for those attempting to keep their financial houses in some semblance of order.
That scenario appears similar to the Bentonville School Board's recent reaction to a price tag on a potential career center as a collaborative project among four Benton County school districts. For a couple of years now, officials at Bentonville, Decatur, Gentry and Gravette have discussed pitching their resources together to develop a career center.
The idea behind such a center is solid: Support skills development for high school students who do not want to go to college for one reason or another. Certainly, that's taking place in schools now, but a dedicated center achieved through collaboration could deliver a comprehensive set of vocational and technical courses at a level that might prove difficult for a single school district to maintain.
On Nov. 30, Bentonville School District Finance Director Janet Schwanhausser told the school board the estimated cost to build, equip and furnish the career center is $21 million.
Sticker shock!
And it gets worse, at least from Bentonville's perspective. Property in the district makes up 79 percent of the assessed value of the center's sponsoring school districts. That means almost 80 percent of the cost would be Bentonville's responsibility. School officials estimated that at $974,000 a year over the course of 30 years if a bond issue paid for construction.
A lot of ideas are great before their costs are known.
But perhaps the most disconcerting issue is one that crops up every time a "regional" approach is proposed, and that's who is in charge.
School leaders were serious enough about the collaborative effort they were able to get a new state law passed to allow school districts to combine their resources by creating a workforce development center authority. That authority, which would be operated by a board of no less than five members, would actually operate the center.
Do the math, and Bentonville's participation starts to make less sense, a fact pointed out by Bentonville School Board member Joe Quinn.
"I'm sorry. We're going to take on
80 percent of the costs and have 20 percent of the vote?" Quinn said at that Nov. 30 meeting.
If one senses a tone of incredulity in Quinn's voice, well, one's radar seems to be working.
This is exactly why it's so challenging to see regional concepts come into existence. Even just looking at Benton and Washington counties, there are 30 cities and 15 school districts. Finding a reasonably acceptable way for all those political subdivisions to get what they want and need out of a regional project is touch, and it gets even more complicated when the costs come into the picture.
It's that way when it comes to regional mass transit, trash disposal and recycling, law enforcement, ambulance coverage and other projects. While the various entities have similar needs, few are ready to give up much control over their own destinies.
Maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing. It doesn't make sense until it makes sense. A lot of headaches are preemptively cured when different organizations recognize all the pieces don't fit. Regional is far more difficult than local.
But, the model exists. It's been crafted into state law. So when the time is right, such a collaboration will be possible. Never say never.
Commentary on 12/11/2017