The school board did not make any decisions tonight during their deliberations on what to include in next winter’s potential bond referendum. In fact, more questions than decisions emerged as the board and administrators tussled with some of the nitty gritty details and numbers involved in the potential projects.
Answering questions from the community input meeting
Superintendent Dr. Ann-Marie Foucault started the conversation by answering some of the questions she heard at last month’s community input meeting.
To start, she clarified that the eight-classroom addition to Albertville Primary would provide enough space for Early Childhood Special Education to move back to Albertville Primary as well as to accommodate 500 students. However, she said an addition of six classrooms onto the high school would bring the capacity to 2,200 students, but the student population of the high school is anticipated to be 2,284 by the 2020-21 school year.
At the meeting, Foucault said she believed architect Bob Rego had said the high school campus could only accommodate six additional classrooms, but after checking with him after the meeting, she said the high school could actually expand by 12 classrooms. This would bring the building’s capacity to 2,360. Adding an additional six classrooms to the initially proposed six-classroom expansion would add an estimated $1.6 million to the total cost, Foucault said. She said the school board would discuss the potential for a larger high school expansion at its next meeting, Sept. 19.
Next, Foucault provided tax impact specifics for local commercial and industrial properties. For a $500,000 business, a $20 million bond would result in a $127 annual tax expense. For a $35 million bond, that same size business would pay $222 per year for the bond. For a $1,000,000 business, a $20 million bond would result in a $264 annual tax expense and $462 per year for a $35 million bond.
In response to questions at the community input meeting about having the high school baseball teams play at the Middle School West or St. Michael Rec. fields rather than building fields on high school grounds, Foucault responded that the main drivers of this project are to help fulfill the district’s goal of having all high school sports take place at the high school, to increase safety of student drivers traveling to off-site locations for practices and for the benefit of having increased access to the athletic trainer if injuries or other athlete needs arise.
In regards to a question posed at the community input meeting about whether the school district would need to pay for ice time on the second sheet of ice, Foucault said the school district would continue paying for ice time, but in exchange they would not have to pay for operating expenses such as cleaning the facility and restrooms, cleaning the ice, marketing, scheduling or running concessions. They currently pay nearly $60,000 annually for ice time for the boys and girls teams.
In order for the new ice arena’s revenues to exceed expenditures by make money, Foucault said the St. Michael Albertville Youth Hockey Association would need to sign a letter of intent that it would purchase an additional 1,106 hours of ice time per year. She said the youth hockey association came back to them with a letter of intent to purchase even more than that, an additional 1,200 hours per year. With this in place, Foucault said revenues at the new arena should exceed expenditures by $125,000 per year.
Domed all-purpose sports facility
After Foucault’s presentation, talk turned to the possible addition of a domed all-purpose sports facility. Foucault said she had done some research, and she went on a site visit with a few other administrators to see domed turf facilities in Wayzata and Eden Prairie the previous week. These two school districts shared their insights and financial records on their domed facilities with STMA administrators, and both schools said they would build a domed facility again “in a heartbeat,” Foucault said.
Eden Prairie and Wayzata administrators said physical education classes used their domed facilities during the school day, and by groups other than high school athletics such as marching band, youth groups, Frisbee groups and other intramural clubs. She said they both operate at capacity and have revenues that outpace expenditures.
The current plans for the domed facility call for varsity football, soccer and lacrosse games to be played on the turf field, but board member Chuck Lefebvre said that a regulation-size soccer field would not fit inside a standard track, which is what the current plan calls for. After some discussion over whether the size would be allowable under the state high school league’s rules, the board decided to look into whether a track could be altered to accommodate a soccer field by making wider curves and elongating straightaways.
School board and audience members had abundant questions about the domed turf facility, such as what quality of artificial turf is in the current budget, if there is any information on artificial turf domed facilities that also have audience stands and if the superintendent could approach local youth sports organizations to get a feel for how often they would utilize the dome. The board was initially split on whether to conduct a feasibility study on the dome facility, but eventually determined they would like to look into it.
More discussion and more answers will come at the September 19 board meeting, and a final decision on the possible bond referendum will be made Oct. 3.