What's it cost to heat & cool 425,000 square feet?

As you should know by now, the new high school building is in (gulp) the hands of our administrative gurus. Anybody want to guess whether the district budgeted for energy costs at the new building prior to July 1?

The pool is filled and running. Anybody else want to guess if any money was budgeted in 2009-10 for the cost of running pool pumps, filtration, heaters, and chemicals?

The district was banking on $40,000 SAVINGS from turning down thermostats during the winter and turning them up this spring. And we all know that no one has found a way to cheat those thermostats by...say....putting a cold damp cloth over them...right?

We don't exactly have the Wizards of Waverly place running the show here. There will be no magic. They might just pull a rabbit out of somewhere though...mainly because old man winter didn't pack as powerful a punch as he has in recent years.

What's important now is that we have just added 425,000 square footage of buildings to the district holdings. That's a 36% increase over the 1.1M square feet we owned as of last fall.

Let's not forget that in addition to paying off loans and adding new staff, we also effectively incur a 36% increase in new ANNUAL utility costs.

Has anyone seen the projected 2010-11 budget for utilities? We have "more than 85%" of the budget expenditures in place...right?