By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
Carter County superintendent of schools, Dr. Paul Green, said he knows there was proverbial money left on the ground at the new school site in the form of unsold lumber. Not only left on the ground, but literally burned up, he said.
“Well, they were,” Green responded frankly when asked about the lumber at the site going to waste. “They did. But we were in a situation where we bid it out, and that was up to the contractor to determine what they wanted to do.”
While the school district would get a cut of any minerals – such as coal – that might be found during ground preparation work on the site, the trees belonged to the contractor clearing the site, Walker Construction. And Walker had the ability to sell the logs to whoever they wanted, he explained.
“The only thing that we get is, if there is coal, we would get 40 percent of whatever coal sold. We have no idea if there is any there, though. There’s potentially coal, but there’s no guarantee of that. But (the logging) was on them. We paid them to prepare the site.”
Even if the district did have rights to the logs, he said, they may not have had time to properly harvest the trees in the time frame available to them.
“The other problem is, because we live in Carter County, with the Indiana cave bat, there’s only certain times of the year you can cut trees. So, we were limited. That’s why when that window opened to cut trees, they had to mass cut trees down, and just lay them on the ground, and not take their time to do logging. So, the vast majority there was – I do know they had some logs stacked up – but I think the vast majority was just burned.”
Time, as much as money, is a major concern throughout this project. For instance, Walker, who was the low bidder on the site prep work, was still more expensive than the board and district had hoped for.
“It was high,” Green said. “Higher than we anticipated.”
But, he explained, like with the trees, awarding the bids was time critical. They could have rebid the project, and someone might have submitted a lower bid. But there was also a risk that, with inflation, all the bids could have come back higher. And if they didn’t award it before September of last year, they were definitely losing $6 million in federal grant funding that the district would have to make up.
“Our ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) money had to be expended. It was time sensitive. We had until September 30 of last year before that money had to be obligated. So, we were in danger of losing $6 million because if that money was not obligated by that date, you could not spend it. You lost it. It went back to the federal government this year. It didn’t have to be spent by then, but you had to have it under contract to be spent. So, it created a situation where we were having to speed things up faster than what we wanted to, because we were going to lose the money.”
He said the district had already obligated more than $13 million in the federal funds, but the Walker contract included the final $6 million available to the district that wasn’t already earmarked. That’s about 24 percent of the company’s total bill for the site prep, which Green said came in at $25 million.
“Basically, if we had to rebid it, we would’ve lost $6 million,” Green said, and that wasn’t a burden he wanted to pass on to the county’s taxpayers or try to make up by cutting the district’s other, already stretched programs. After all, he explained, one of the benefits of a new school will be the shared resources that will allow the district to offer more programs while saving money. The other is the amount of state and federal money they were able to put towards it, enabling the county to build a state of the art facility without raising tax rates.
Green explained that $20 million of the total funding came from those ESSER funds, which was already allocated for school renovation and construction before he ever came on as superintendent.
“So, that was already in the pot for this,” he said. “We then received a $10 million award to construct a new career tech center, which was LAIC funding. Then we got $27 million for the construction of a new, or renovation of East Carter High School. That was through an SFCC award, which is the state finance corporation.”
That’s around $57 million in funding from state or federal sources that won’t cost the district anything, Green explained. The remaining costs will be covered by the district’s bonding power.
“We’re going to bond about $45 million,” he noted.
Even with that bonding capacity, he said, there will be times that they have to make decisions about what they can afford, and what they need.
“I’m going to be honest, there are questions about this entire project,” he said. “To do everything we want to do, to have every bell and whistle, to have all the things, is going to cost more than what we currently have.”
Part of that is due to inflation, he said. Part of it is due to Carter County’s lower tax base. In addition to a smaller population, Carter County has one of the lowest tax rates in the region, at 47. Only Lewis (45.6) and Elliott (44) have a lower rate for school taxes. Rowan has a rate of 53, Lawerence 57.2, Boyd 68.5, and Ashland Independent 70.2, while over in Greenup County, Russell Independent jumps dramatically to 84.9. Rounding out the top three surrounding districts are Greenup County at 87.2, Fairview Independent at 88.5, and Raceland Independent topping the list at a whopping 101.7 tax rate.
Despite that, he doesn’t have any plans to ask for tax rate increases – even though with a state two-to-one match, every dollar raised here could result in $3 of student benefits – and in fact, they’ve actually cut tax rates.
“Since I’ve been superintendent in this district, we’ve lowered tax rates,” he said. “Taxes are lower today than they were when I came in.”
If people have seen increases in their tax bills, it isn’t because the school district has raised taxes, it’s because property values have gone up.
“The property values jumped a lot,” he explained. “We actually took a four percent increase (in revenue), but the four percent wasn’t from the rate. It was from where the (property) values went up. So, we had four percent of additional revenue, but the rates actually went down.”
And, he said, even with a lower tax rate than surrounding counties, and questions about what to prioritize in the new design, the kids are going to “have a nice school, where we have nice things.”
The soonest the new school could open is the 2028/2029 school year, Green said, and there are a lot of decisions to make between now and then.
“We’re looking at site development this year. Going to bid sometime next school year on construction, to start potentially next school year.”
But he’s confident the new facilities will more than meet everyone’s expectations, and offer students more opportunities – especially those interested in exploring opportunities in the trades.
Green also noted that he’s heard concerns about the elevation, but said the hill would be significantly transformed and elevation reduced during the site preparation. He also noted that additional turn lanes on US 60 had already been approved by the Kentucky Department of Transportation and that the funds for those road improvements had already been allocated by the state legislature.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
