Finances in Uintah School District has been a target of public opinion this year and Business Administrator Derek Anderson provided a response to recent claims in a letter distributed to Uintah School District employees this month that has since been publically shared. In response to the claim that the District plans to spend $20 million dollars on a new district office, Anderson states that $20 million dollars is actually the top of the estimate for three buildings, not one. The estimated cost to replace the three facilities, Central Cove, the Transportation building, and the District Office, ranges from a total of $14 million to $20 million dollars. Renovation estimates were also obtained but are high because of identified structural concerns as well as all three buildings being the least energy efficient facilities in the District based on a separate energy use analysis. The cost estimate to renovate the three buildings ranges from a total of $11 million to $17 million dollars. A second claim addressed by Anderson is that the inflation rate of construction costs is 7.15 percent. Anderson explains that according to the National Association of Home Builders, the inflation of construction costs is 3.47 percent. A third claim addressed by Anderson is that the District has $50 million dollars in surplus waiting for use. Anderson explains that as nice as it may sound, the District finances cannot be run like a business. By law, the District is mandated to maintain separate funds and the money in those funds can only be used for the designated items assigned to each fund type, explains Anderson. The only way to come up with the $50 million dollar amount in the claim would be to combine the Capital Projects fund, General Budget’s Unassigned fund (which covers three months of operating expenses), Debt Service already paid out, school foods money, SITLA monies, Title 1 funds, Special Education dollars, money from other state and federal programs, the budgets of Uintah High School and both Middle Schools, and the funds in an account for student reading programs. “Doing this,” shares Anderson, “would be a clear violation of state law.”
