The District 200 Community Finance Committee (CFC) unanimously reversed its Jan. 18 decision at its do-over meeting on Feb. 3, withdrawing its support for the issuance of $20 million in debt certificates. The committee’s vote sends a strong and clear message to the D200 school board that there is no reason to borrow money.
In January, the board stated that it wanted the CFC’s input on the administration’s borrowing recommendation. The board even postponed its debt certificate vote from Jan. 27 to Feb. 24 to allow for the replacement CFC meeting on Feb. 3. It was needed as the new committee’s first meeting on Jan. 18 violated the Open Meetings Act (OMA). D200 failed to provide the public with a link to watch the meeting in real time and to make a public comment and failed to post an agenda 48 hours in advance of the meeting. All of which made the virtual open meeting a closed meeting.
D200 did not want to hold a new meeting. When community members raised the OMA violations with Supt. Greg Johnson, he initially offered to add public comments to the minutes of the Jan. 18 meeting. It was an inadequate remedy, especially given that administrators and board members failed to provide basic financial and debt certificate information to the community members in the Jan. 18 meeting. Public comments were needed to fill in the gaping holes of missing information.
Administrators failed to provide key financial documents and make clear that D200 has $96 million in the cash reserve and more than $70 million are surplus taxpayer dollars which make any borrowing unnecessary, yet pressured the CFC to support the debt certificates anyway. Moreover, the money in the reserve earns so little in interest that the borrowing recommendation is fiscally unsound and ridiculous. D200 wants taxpayers to spend at least $320,000 a year in interest for 20 years to borrow $20 million when it could use money sitting idle in the reserve for free.
The $20 million in debt certificates would be used to accelerate maintenance projects to “beat” inflation, not that they need to be addressed sooner. Debt certificates represent the greatest funding affront to taxpayers, as debt certificates would enable D200 to circumvent taxpayers and even cost more than bonds.
The debt certificates are a shell game. The administration’s memo states that the borrowing “maintains an avenue for the District to address Project 2 using fund balance reserves and future budgets.” D200 plans to take advantage of inflation and hike the 2022 tax levy to the full 5% to pay for the debt certificates, raising the base for future levies and creating a budget surplus, which it proposes to use to fund Project 2 and its 17-lane pool and 600-seat natatorium, bypassing voters.
Based on the unanimous CFC ruling, the board should reject the fiscally unsound, disingenuous borrowing recommendation at its Feb. 24 meeting. Email and encourage the board (boe@oprfhs.org) to vote “No”.
Monica Sheehan is an Oak Park resident.