Q&A Superintendent Steve Murley: Part One, Talking About Today's Revenue Purpose Statement Vote

Iowa City School Superintendent Steve Murley sat down with Iowa City Patch for an interview Monday evening, and discussed the future of the Iowa City School District, today's Revenue Purpose Statement vote, why enrollment projections could be low, a lack of public trust for the district, on him applying for the Omaha superintendent job, and his thoughts on the controversial diversity policy.

Part one of the interview focused on the Revenue Purpose Statement, up for vote today for voters who live in the Iowa City School District attendance area. Part Two will be coming later today.

Related Article: Info on the Revenue Purpose Statement Vote

Editor's Note: The following Q&A is an edited and abridged version of the original interview. 

Iowa City Patch: How are you feeling about the Revenue Purpose Statement (RPS) vote right now?

Superintendent Steve Murley: I'm feeling pretty good about it. I think most of the people I speak to on a regular basis understand that the need is there. Even if they have problems with other facets of the district for various reasons (Editor's Note: He listed many, many facets, omitted for space) the people who I'm speaking with collectively recognize that there's a huge need.

The other thing that we're trying to talk to people about, because I think it's gotten lost in the shuffle, is that it's really an issue of timing. We need to build three new elementary schools-- we have 41 portable classrooms full of students right now, and most of them are at the elementary level.

So the question isn't are we going to build three elementary schools, the question is when are going to build three new elementary schools? 

So when are we going to build those schools? Well at about $12 million an elementary school, it's probably going to take us two to three years to aggregate the money needed to build that, which means that three schools over a nine year period of time.

What [passing the RSP] does is gives us the opportunity to build three new elementary schools within five years, maybe even in three years. This allows us to also tackle other projects, such as the Penn Elementary addition and the third high school, rather than letting them get pushed down the road. The RPS allows us to accelerate our process to meet the needs of today and tomorrow.

(Editor's Note: Murley indicated in the interview that these three new elementary schools would likely be located in southeast Iowa City, south central Iowa City, and the North Liberty and Coralville Corridor.)

Iowa City Patch: That said, what sort of controls does the public have to make sure that the school board and the district do what they're saying they're going to do now if the RSP passes? What's to prevent some sort of a wild spending spree that voters might be afraid of?

Murley: Well for one thing they have the same amount of control that they had the last time they approved SILO in 2007. Given the problems with that vote, we recognize that people are looking for more concrete details, so that's why we put that chart together to show what our priorities are and to give a time frame of when we think we can attack those things.

Iowa City Patch: But those priorities aren't binding.

Murley: They're not binding, but putting them out there, putting some numbers on them, putting some dates on them, certainly makes the board a little more accountable for them.

The other thing I say to people who argue they want more say in the process, is that our voter turnout in school board elections is six percent. The way you give your opinion in a representative democracy is when you vote for your representatives. So I would like to see more people voting in these elections, as that would ensure that the people who are elected are really representing the opinion of the community.

Once those people are elected, I think it's important for people to realize that it is the job of those representatives to listen to their constituents and then vote. That's our expectation for this plan, that with each project we will bring it to the board for their approval.

So it can't just be the administration running around willy nilly doing stuff. Conversely the board can't just act unilaterally, because in order to sell the Tax Avenue Revenue Bonds and have them to maintain their tax free status, they have to be expended within a two year window. So the board can't just say "Hey let's borrow a lot of money." because without a plan to spend it we would end up running that timeline out and the bonds would lose their exempt status.

So there are some controls from it just being a blank check.

Iowa City Patch: To continue to play devil's advocate, though, you mentioned the voting. If people have buyer's remorse about the current board, that's not something they can change now before this vote.

Murley: No they can't.

Iowa City Patch: But they could vote No now on RSP and vote for it next time six months down the line when it is closer to when there could be three new board members in September. They can kind of influence the board in that sense, then, correct?

Murley: Yes.

Iowa City Patch: Alright so let's go even further, say I'm somebody who doesn't trust the board and doesn't trust the administration to do the right things with this money. Is there a way that the public can check these decisions after the approval has been given if they totally disagree and the board and administration do it anyway?

Murley: Not if we do it with this process. The only way for the public to have that sort of direct input would be to raise the money with general obligation bonding, which carries its own problems, including substantially raising property taxes if approved.

Iowa City Patch: Which is part of why GO bond votes are much harder to pass.

Murley: Right.

Iowa City Patch: Conversely, assuming I'm this voter who doesn't trust you anyway, even if this other early RSP recertification votes fail you're still going to have the same freedom to spend the money that will be raised until the current revenue purpose statement expires in 2017 correct?

Murley: Yes.

Iowa City Patch: And how much money would that be?

Murley: They would have access to about $40 million dollars.

And that is with us still having to collect money to build the third high school along with other projects, so if you think about the elementary buildings costing $12 million each, that would probably be an elementary school once every three years.

Iowa City Patch: And you then wouldn't be able to add air conditioning to some of the older schools?

Murley: No, no there wouldn't be the money for that then.

Iowa City Patch: And even if it isn't renewed now or in the near future, once the Revenue Purpose Statement comes to 2017 it's going to be necessary to renew it then anyway in order to pay for school projects with local option sales tax dollars.

Murley: Correct, if it is not renewed prior to that it will have to be renewed within 60 days of its expiration date [Editor's Note: to the current state sales tax end date, which currently is in 2029].

Iowa City Patch: And if I understand correctly, if it's not renewed [before the end of 2017] you won't be able to use SILO for projects after that, but it will be used to lower property taxes.

Murley: We will still collect the SILO dollars, but without a RPS, it will need to be prioritized on spending down general obligation debt on school projects we've done already, as well as debt to the Physical Plant and Education Levy (PPEL) fund. After that it doesn't matter because you've just used up all the SILO money.

Iowa City Patch: So essentially property taxes would go down because you would not longer need to levy as much to pay these debts because they were backfilled by SILO dollars?

Murley: Correct.

Iowa City Patch: And  with the SILO money unable to be used directly on school building or improvement, that would really benefit no stakeholder in the district, except for those who want lower property taxes.

Murley: Right.

Iowa City Patch: So if it doesn't pass Tuesday, do you have a contingency plan in mind to do instead?

Murley: We'll be out in front of voters, working for another run in it six months from now. The kids in the district, the staff, and the parents need access to these resources sooner rather than later, and we'll be back out making that argument.

Iowa City Patch: And in the meantime, just in term of summer projects, I know you've talked about school safety, are you also looking at air conditioning for some of the schools that need in the district?

Murley: What we're doing right now is having a study done that will help tell us what we consider to be a worse case scenario in terms of cost. We picked a building (Longfellow Elementary) that we felt would be particularly problematic when it comes to adding air conditioning so we'll get an estimate from that and assume that most schools will be cheaper or at the most as expensive as that.

That will give us a ballpark for us to consider air conditioning.

Iowa City Patch: What makes Longfellow so problematic?

Murley: It's a multistory, old building, thick internal walls, with a design that is not conducive to adding air conditioning.

At the moment it may not be realistic to do HVAC for some of those old buildings anytime soon, but with access to those funds (from the RSP vote) it would allow us to do some of that this summer.