Unpretty

Seeing that the district is quietly working towards presenting a plan to build yet another elementary school (to the tune of $18-22M), we felt it was long overdue to take a look at our debt picture.  That is what people do before planning  big purchase, right????

Pick up any newspaper or magazine and it won't be long before you see what folks all over the country are doing during this 3 year (and counting) downturn in the economy.  They're paying down their debt and not creating new debt.   Sounds like a solid plan...right?  Nope, at least not in Sun Prairie.  The FTT Committee will be reviewing APL population estimates this coming Monday, and that will be the first shot fired in a battle to build an 8th elementary school.  APL estimates are ALWAYS a prelude to "time to build".

Suppose we could get
an elementary school cheap from China?

In all those many pages of the school district's Annual Meeting booklet, what you probably did not see (and neither Jim McCourt nor Phil Frei pointed out in any of their slides) was any reference to the total outstanding (and not in a good way) debt.  Sure...we have a (gulp) nice Taj Mah High School to go with two palatial elementary schools.

But way back on page 39 of the Annual Meeting booklet is the sum total of our debt: $171,349,618 as of  October 2011.  Unfortunately, DPI data only show the debt picture as of June 30, 2010, at which time the debt was $175,456,911. How appropriate that the figure ends in "911", because we think that this much debt constitutes an emergency.

When you look at DPI debt data for all 424 districts, Sun Prairie ranks #2 in total debt (only Milwaukee has more!!!), #8 in total allowable debt%, and #6 in debt-to-value percent.  Those aren't exactly the areas in which we wish to be leaders, folks.  Sure, these schools look McDreamy, but we're mortgaging the futures of our residents for bricks and mortar.  Last time we checked, the bricks aren't the ones teaching our kids.  We also recently heard that the wonderful geothermal system we put in the first of the new schools (Horizon 5-6 years back) is aging.  The system depends on a large number of pumps and these have started to fail.  Have we budgeted (or even talked about budgeting) how much that replacement cost will be?

By State Statute, the Sun Prairie Area School District is able to borrow up to 10% of its equalized

Debt payments due over the next 17 years
(from the 2011-12 SPASD Annual Meeting Book)

value. The 2010 equalized value was $3,858,367,621; therefore, the district could borrow an
additional $214,487,144 ($385,836,762 - $171,349,618).

Do the math folks, as the graphic from the 2011-12 Annual Meeting Book shows, for each of the next 17 years we will be paying at least $10.2M and as much as $16.1M in taxes just to pay down this debt.  Add it all up and we'll be paying a little over $225 MEELYUN DOLLARS for a debt which currently stands at $171.5M.  That means we'll be paying INTEREST of almost $54 MILLION DOLLARS during that time.  We may have gotten great bond rates, but any way you slice it, it's costing us 31.5% of the principal.

Maybe...just maybe... we need to be a tad more creative before we jump to spending another $18-22M on a third palatial elementary school.

So damn unpretty
I'll make you feel unpretty too
--TLC "Unpretty"

Garnish Is Something Only A Chef Would Like

Something has quietly inserted itself as a staple of the district's monthly check register. And it's another one of those things that NOBODY wants to talk about. Well, we NEED to talk about it, people, because it means something.  We'll let you decide exactly what.

Sure, Chef Gordon Ramsey would be hotter than Hell's Kitchen if a dish was served sans garnishment. But we don't think he's talking about THIS type of garnish.

Go back through the district check registers (they're available via BoardDocs). We looked at the the first meeting in September going back 5 years.  Back in 2006 and 2007, we couldn't find ANY garnishment listings. Now, that might mean we missed a couple, as the school board packages back then were not offered in text-searchable PDF form. So you have to really scour them. But...in 2008, there were 3 monthly garnishment checks. 6 in 2009 and now 9 in the 2010. Something is wrong with this picture.

What is garnishment? 
A visit to every student's term paper friend, Wikipedia, yields the following:
 Wage garnishment, the most common type of garnishment, is the process of deducting money from an employee's monetary compensation (including salary), sometimes as a result of a court order. Wage garnishments continue until the entire debt is paid or arrangements are made to pay off the debt. Garnishments can be taken for any type of debt but common examples of debt that result in garnishments include:
 ---child support 
---defaulted student loans
 ---taxes 
 ---unpaid court fines


Are Increasing Garnishments a Result of the Economy?
 There sure looks to be a cause-and-effect relationship. Since we cannot be privy to the details (nor should we be...) we cannot make a definitive declaration on whether the rise in garnishments is related to people struggling financially...or whether it says something else about the district. 
 Regardless of the reason, this is something to which the board should be paying attention as they try to set a tax levy increase that will likely be 4.5% over last year. And we haven't heard anything about the Department of Revenue's equalized value statements....which do not effect the levy, but DO affect the mill rate for property taxes.

Wage Garnishments On The Rise April 2010 
As the economy continues to sour and more people fall behind on their bills, more people find themselves being sued by their creditors, or more accurately, by debt collectors...

  Garnishment Complications in a Hard Economy August 2010
The combination of a downturn in the economy and an upturn in wage attachments has created unexpected complications. It did not take a crystal ball to predict that employee garnishments would increase when employees' jobs and pay were negatively affected by the economy. But employers did not foresee how creditors and agencies would actually complicate the process by trying to "help out" debtors...