Story by Chris Lawrence
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The West Virginia School Building Authority has approved the financial plan for the Putnam County Board of Education for a proposed school construction bond. The board signed off the plan, which was presented to the SBA Tuesday. The plan calls for asking the SBA for $25 million to match with the bond funds.
“It did not guarantee we would be supporting that in the end, it’s just that we are part of their potential funding source through their process,” said SBA Executive Director Andy Neptune.
Putnam County Superintendent of Schools John Hudson said a detailed plan for the bond will be presented to the Putnam County School Board at their regular meeting next week. If approved, the bond will go before voters on the November election ballot.
The construction bond will be a total of almost $75 million. It would cover the cost of building a new Hurricane Middle School and upgrades to athletic facilities at Poca and Winfield high schools along with George Washington Middle School. The cost of the new middle school would be $64.6 million. The SBA funding would all go toward the school construction part of the plan since the authority doesn’t pay for athletic facilities.
“When they come to the School Building Authority they are seeking financial backing for school construction, the rest of their bond is for their significant athletic facilities upgrade,” Neptune explained.
The measure would go before voters in November and by December it would be known if they had approved the plan. Hudson will then return to the SBA in December to make the county’s formal presentation for funding, armed with the decision of voters. According to Neptune for such a large request, it might be doled out over two years rather than all at one time.
“We try to say can we ‘multi-year’ that. It allows us to make the commitment of $25 million, but it allows us to spread whatever money we have out over as many projects as we can,” he explained.
Neptune said after a couple of very robust years for SBA funding, this year might be much closer to their normal budget amount of $51 to $55 million and competition for the money would be stiffer.