Jacksonville School District 117 Superintendent Steve Ptacek feels more optimistic this month about the district’s overall financial picture possibly paving the way for another major construction project.
The first two months of the school year saw revenues dip from the local sales tax, which was the first time that had happened since the 1-cent sales tax had taken effect in 2014.
Ptacek says the revenues rebounded this month, putting the revenues ahead of last year’s numbers: “If that continues along this trend, we should end up with about $370,000 above our bond payments, which then we can put that money into a store to be able to use as a large payment on a future bond sale in our attempt to build a new school and do another project.”
Ptacek says that the bond sale is looking optimistic after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a half point yesterday: “Last month, the indicators were that things were becoming more pessimistic about the possibility to be able to have the bond sales and build the new school. The Fed just did cuts, and the sales tax revenue came up, and starting to realize that in the long run, in 2037, the South Jacksonville TIF will go away which will generate new property tax dollars that we could use at that point in time if we’re short with a bond payment between 2037-2040. I spoke with the board that everything is becoming a little bit more optimistic that this might happen. We have our architect looking at design costs and we are working our municipal advisor to talk about how much money we can generate with bond sales. We are doing what we need to do to investigate the possibility of this all happening. We’ve continued to do that. I’m a little more optimistic this month than I was last month of it actually happening.”
Ptacek reminded the board of education that there is still a lot of preliminary work to be done before a new project can be committed to. He hopes to have more information to board members ahead of the October meeting after speaking with the district’s financial investment advisers at PMA.
The district has talked since the summer of a large incoming cohort of students in need of special education space, which the district is currently short on. On top of that most imminent need, the current Murrayville-Woodson Elementary School has been in dire need of repair or replacement for the last several years. It is currently the oldest building in District 117, having been built in 1917.
Jacksonville School District officials have been considering a $10 million bond sale at the end of this year to build a new school near Illinois Route 267 to replace the current Murrayville building.