Voted No on the Bonds!
Nine Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools are still waiting for renovations voters approved over the past eight years.
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This time, 57 percent of voters — and three out of four who voted at Northeast Middle — said no to CMS bonds.
Beverly Cannaday, a Northeast parent, says she wasn’t going to keep voting yes when her school’s renovations haven’t materialized, and when CMS failed to plan for inflation. Rising costs jacked up the price of projects higher on the priority list, so projects waiting in line have smaller budgets.
“If they’re not going to spend it wisely, why keep throwing money at it?” Cannaday said.
But David McAlexander, a parent leader at Long Creek Elementary, voted yes, even though no one can say when his school will get promised improvements. In 2002, voters approved money to design a replacement for the aging, crowded Huntersville school. This month they denied money to build it.
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As it became clear that federal judges would demand a new assignment plan, the school board voted to spend millions to bring old schools up to modern standards. Some already had minor projects authorized in 1997 bonds. The board decided to fold them into more sweeping and costly renovations.
Norm Gundel, a Cornelius lawyer who chairs the citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee, says that approach made sense.
He and Chamberlain say that if CMS had gone ahead with the smaller projects, CMS would have wasted money if it had done the work, then torn it down a few years later as part of a sweeping rehab.
But the decision, they say, created a problem: People with a stake in those schools complain about waiting eight years for CMS to deliver.
“In hindsight,” says Chamberlain, “we probably should have just gotten on with the (1997) renovations.”
Cannaday, the Northeast parent, says it’s not just the timing that irks her. As construction costs soared, higher-priority projects have eaten into the money left for other schools.
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School board member Kaye McGarry says the GOP plan to borrow a smaller amount would have brought quicker results.
But for schools waiting to see their blueprints turned into bricks, those results would have been mixed. Wings would have been added, but renovations would have been shelved.
And McGarry says in the long run, she thinks well-planned bond requests every four years — the way Central Piedmont Community College does it — make more sense than frequent votes.
Gundel, whose citizens’ advisory panel unanimously endorsed the 2005 bonds, says CMS has honored its promises. But big projects take time, especially when they involve work on an occupied school.
Helping voters understand that, Gundel says, is one of the many challenges ahead.