Question 4 Repairs of public schools

Question 4

Do you favor a $15,000,000 bond issue to capitalize the State?s School Revolving Fund for repairs and improvements in public school facilities to address health, safety and compliance deficiencies, general renovation needs and learning space upgrades?

Last spring, after receiving $1 million from the state’s Revolving Renovation Fund to address air quality problems, Machias officials found a host of new deficiencies at the Rose Gaffney School.

While Principal Mitchell Look now must find a way to pay for the repairs, he’s grateful that at least he knows about them.

Without the initial impetus to “get into the walls,” the problems would have continued to multiply unseen, he said last week.

Voters will decide Nov. 6 whether to add $15 million to the Revolving Renovation Fund, a state-local partnership in which school districts can receive between 30 and 70 percent of repair costs up to $1 million.

The program has a number of benefits for local property taxpayers. For example, a portion of the money doesn’t need to be paid back at all; the rest can be paid back interest free.

Another plus is that it enables school districts to take the first, most crucial step.

“It encourages districts to dig in and figure out what’s wrong,” said Jim Rier of the State Board of Education. He helped create the lending plan in 1998.

“In many cases [school officials] end up putting the analysis off or delay looking because [they] don’t want to start tearing into the building,” Rier said.

The state’s contribution is based on the amount the district receives through the funding formula. When the loans are repaid, the money goes back into the fund to help other schools.

The goal is for the state to provide half the $200 million in school repairs that have been identified.

This year’s bond proposal and another planned for next year would bring the state up to the $100 million to which it is committed, said Yellow Light Breen, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Education.

Created in 1998, the program meant that for the first time the state could focus on repairing buildings as well as constructing new ones, Breen said.

“It was a huge improvement in public policy,” he said.

During the past three years, the Legislature has appropriated $71 million in cash to the fund. Most of that money has been loaned out, while another $60 million in projects await funding.

The fund has enabled more than 77 school districts across the state to make health and safety improvements and to address general renovation needs.

Forty-five thousand Maine students have benefited from the program, which has funded 171 projects in 150 school buildings.

The Revolving Renovation Fund is the “most progressive school renovation funding program in the country,” said Jay Readinger, a facilities specialist with the Department of Education.

Before its creation, schools either had to raise local funds or let buildings get run down, he said.

SAD 22 Assistant Superintendent Emil Genest couldn’t praise the program enough.

Over the years, the district, which consists of Hampden, Winterport and Newburgh, has made $3.2 million in repairs, while taxpayers were responsible for only $1.9 million.

“It’s a heck of a program,” Genest said.