Bentonville School District buys land

Board prepares for enrollment growth

BENTONVILLE — The School Board unanimously agreed Tuesday to buy yet another piece of land — its fourth land purchase this year — as it prepares for anticipated enrollment growth.

The property covers 40 acres at the corner of Haxton and Roberts roads, less than a mile west of Main Street in Cave Springs and just south of Bentonville city limits. It would be the southern-most property the School District owns, about two miles south of Central Park Elementary School.

Janet Schwanhausser, the district’s finance director, called it “40 flat, beautiful, southern acres that would be perfect for an elementary school.”

The district has tentatively agreed with the seller, Thrilled Land Investments, on a price of $1,056,000, or $26,400 per acre.

The district will be asking voters this spring to approve a 1.9-mill tax increase to pay for construction of two elementary schools, a middle school and a junior high school over the next five years.

Schwanhausser said the district would like to put the first of those new buildings, an elementary school, on the Haxton Road property. Pending approval of the millage increase, that building is scheduled to open in fall 2019.

Money raised through the additional millage also would be used to pay for the four pieces of land — a total of 257 acres for $5.5 million

— the district has bought this year. For now the district plans to pay for that land out of reserve.

“When we set down this road, our budget for land was $6 million, so we’ll still be well below our total budget,” Schwanhausser told the board.

If the district doesn’t reimburse itself for the land purchases, its reserve balance at the end of June will be $23 million, or 15 percent of the operating budget, Schwanhausser said.

The Haxton Road property is unincorporated Benton County land, but is in an area forecast to be served by Rogers city services, said Paul Wallace, the district’s director of facilities.

In other business, the board also unanimously agreed to accept the annual audit done on the district by Beall Barclay and Co. for the fiscal year ending June 30.

Chris Cluck, who led the firm’s audit team on Bentonville, said the firm issued an unmodified opinion on the district’s financial statements, meaning the auditors found them free of material misstatements and in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

In a separate auditing matter, the district also heard this month from Arkansas Legislative Audit regarding some limited auditing procedures the state did last year. Bentonville was one of seven school districts included in the limited procedures.

The report issued last week found the district purchased a vehicle in 2015 without obtaining bids in advance. The vehicle was a Chevrolet Suburban for use by the superintendent, Schwanhausser said.

“We have modified our procedure to ensure no purchase order is issued prior to the collection of bids on any item over $10,000,” Schwanhausser said.

That was the only finding on Bentonville from Legislative Audit’s report.