School
board OKs spending near $7M
Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer
GALLUP — The McKinley County public school board approved
nearly $6.9 million in mostly capital spending on district facilities
Tuesday evening. Over $2.3 million will come as a two mill levy
voters will be asked to vote on Feb. 3.
If approved, the levy would be an extension of the four-year
levy voters approved in 2000 and run for another six years,
until 2010.
A recent independent reappraisal of local property, however,
means property owners would have to pay roughly $0.04 more on
every thousand dollars of taxable land they own. Someone who
owns $25,000 worth of taxable land, for example, would pay an
extra $1.00 for the year on top of what he or she had been paying
since 2000.
Among the big-ticket items the levy, expected to generate $2,315,770
next year, would fund are $200,000 to replace office equipment
and improve intercom systems across the district, $115,000 to
update the heating and cooling system at Thoreau Elementary
School, $66,000 to repair half the ceiling tiles throughout
Crownpoint Elementary School, $66,000 for Jefferson Elementary
School and Lincoln Elementary School each for bathroom remodeling,
$65,000 for vocational and technical education equipment districtwide,
and tens of thousands more on roof, pavement and parking lot
repairs.
The other $4,572,800 in spending the board approved Tuesday
comes from 20 percent of the district's annual impact aid funds,
money the federal government awards the district each year in
compensation for the non-tax-generating federal lands within
its boundaries. New Mexico, however, funnels only 25 percent
of the impact aid directly back to the district, which must
use 20 percent specifically on capital projects.
The larger draws on the impact aid funds include $934,000 for
a new security camera system in district schools from IBM, $750,000
for a pair of concession/bathroom/press box facilities at Crownpoint
and Thoreau High Schools, and $750,000 for an aquatic center
the district is building in conjunction with the city. Another
$1 million will go toward matching an approximately $9 million
federal grant for districtwide telecommunications maintenance,
upgrades and improvements.
The district will also begin using this fund to repay a recent
revenue bond for the construction of new teacher housing at
$1.2 million annually for the next several years.
