NLR board near vote on school plans, tax jump

4-mill levy to be put before district voters gains backing

Members of the North Little Rock School Board are on the brink of pursuing voter approval in November of a 4-mill property tax increase for a replacement middle school and a new indoor sports facility.

The board discussed the possible capital improvements — to include work on the district’s landmark Ole Main building — at a work session Thursday night in preparation for a formal vote at the March 28 regular monthly business meeting.

“This has been a real journey,” board member Valerie McLean said, referring to the community forums and surveys in recent months regarding the building plans. “We have gone down a lot of different paths. I feel real good about where we have ended up.

“I think this is a great plan,” she continued. “I feel very comfortable with this and I think a lot of our community will feel the very same way.”

The others on the seven-member board conveyed the same feelings.

The plan headed for a board vote calls for putting a 4-mill increase to the district’s current 48.3-mill property tax rate on the general election ballot Nov. 5.

If approved by voters, the new mills would generate $51,832,478, which would be combined with $44.8 million from different sources. Those sources include the district’s building fund, savings from refinanced interest rates on bonds and $20,871,050 from the state’s Academic Facilities Partnership Program.

The total $96,675,589 would cover a $68 million middle school campus for grades six through eight, and an $18 million indoor sports facility next to the North Little Rock High School. There would be funds for demolition costs and for contingencies.

Improvement to the Ole Main building would come from $13 million that the district is holding in its building fund for the project, Superintendent Gregory Pilewski and Chief Financial Officer Brian Brown told the board.

Brown gave the board other options that included asking for a smaller 2.6-mill tax increase for just the middle school.

Another option was to seek state aid for the improvements to the Ole Main

building — but to be eligible for that possible state aid, Brown said, the district would have to first do an initial $40 million overhaul of all electrical, plumbing, heating and cooling, and elevator systems. Even if that was accomplished, the district could not be assured of the state funding and the district would be limited on how the building might be used.

North Little Rock Board member Rochelle Redus told her board colleagues that she wanted community members to know that the Ole Main renovation is a priority but the district would do it “in-house,” without the state partnership money that is strictly targeted for student academic space.

Board member Tracy Steele and others suggested that various organizations — including alumni groups and the city of North Little Rock — be approached for help with the historic building.

“Let us go to work,” Pilewski told the board about planning for Ole Main.

The district is under some time pressure to ask voters for the millage increase for the long-discussed middle school replacement.

The district is approved for $20.8 million in state aid for the project but it must have signed construction contracts for the project by January 2025 or face having the money pulled back and distributed to projects in other districts, Brown said. The state gives districts 18 months between approval of state funding and getting signed contracts.

The 8,000-student North Little Rock district built new or extensively renovated its elementary schools and the high school in what started out as a $265.5 million capital improvement program.

District voters at a special election on Feb. 14, 2012, had voted for a 7.4-mill property tax increase to finance construction. That was on top of plans to cut expenses in other aspects of the district’s operations.

The district intended at the time to include the building of a new middle school campus — which is made up of the former Northeast High and Lakewood Middle Schools — as well as make the Ole Main high school building functional, but in the end didn’t have adequate local and state resources to follow through.

A possible 4-mill schooltax increase would raise the district’s tax rate to 52.3 mills, if adopted by voters. The possible increase would cost the owner of a $100,000 home an additional $80 a year.

A mill is one-tenth of 1 cent. One mill levied on an assessed value of $1,000 yields $1 in property taxes due. Arkansas counties assess property at 20% of actual value. The assessed value of a $100,000 house is $20,000. That $20,000 multiplied by 0.004 or 4 mills would generate an $80 tax increase. The owner of a $200,000 home would pay an additional $160, if a 4-mill tax increase is approved.