In last week’s Wednesday Journal cover story, District 200 Superintendent Greg Johnson omits key information regarding the cash reserve (our stockpiled property tax dollars) and his administration’s recommendation to issue debt certificates, the bottom-of-the-barrel of funding tools.
D200 has never stooped so low as to issue debt certificates at any time in the school’s history. They represent the greatest funding affront to taxpayers, as debt certificates would enable the high school to bypass taxpayers for funding approval and deny taxpayers any recourse to put the funding on the ballot, making D200 unaccountable to taxpayers on spending.
In short, debt certificates are undemocratic. They even cost more to borrow than bonds. Johnson mentions none of that in the Jan. 13 board meeting nor in the Jan. 18 Community Finance Committee meeting.
The administration recommends that the board borrow $20 million to address projects in the 10-year maintenance plan. Johnson fails to mention that the budget already includes $4-6 million annually for maintenance. There’s a false narrative being pushed at the board table that D200 hasn’t been spending sufficiently on maintenance and improvements when the school has spent north of $125 million in the last two decades.
One place the school has been intentionally negligent is the maintenance of its pools. FOIA responses reveal that D200 has addressed none of the repairs outlined in the January 2016 Larson Report, including an “urgent” repair cited in the August 2021 report. The engineering reports state that these repairs are needed to safely continue using the pools.
D200 has $96 million in its cash reserve. Johnson fails to mention that district only needs to keep $25 million in reserve to earn the highest financial rating from the Illinois State Board of Education. At least $70 million of the surplus reserve could be used for maintenance needs or returned to taxpayers. No borrowing is needed. The surplus tax dollars are earning so little in interest, 0.01-0.03% annually, making the borrowing recommendation ridiculous.
D200 wants taxpayers to pay at least $320,000 a year in interest for 20 years to borrow $20 million when it could use the money sitting idle in the reserve. Should the state ever push new financial obligations onto school districts, D200 should address it at that time. The same hypothetical, fear-mongering scenario was used in 2005 when D200 took advantage of a tax loophole to siphon off unauthorized taxpayer dollars to amass a cash reserve surpassing $130 million.
D200 plans to take advantage of current inflation (highest in decades) and hike the 2022 tax levy to the full 5% to pay for the debt certificates, raising taxes significantly while hiking the base for future levies. This would impact homeowners and renters alike. Moreover, the levy hike would result in a budget surplus that D200 proposes to use with cash reserves to fund Project 2 and its 17-lane pool and 600-seat natatorium, bypassing voters.
The board vote on debt certificates has been postponed to February 24. Tell the board (boe@oprfhs.org) to vote “no” to debt certificates.
Monica Sheehan is a resident of Oak Park.