Are We Being Ripped Off?
As of July 1, 2012, PWCS had almost $760 million in bonds outstanding. To date I have never seen anything that accounts for what those bonds are used for. I’ve been trying to track the bonds PWCS has “issued” in the past two years, and I can’t find about $20 million. I have no clue what the bond money was used for, and on one I’ve asked does either.
I hope you find that as shocking as I do.
I’ve been harping about the need to account for the bonds PWCS “issues” for some time. Because of timing issues, PWCS will frequently pull bonds before the cost of projects is known. This past February PWCS pulled $67 million in bonds, of which $28 million was for the elementary school in Haymarket. The bid for that school was about $19 million, so PWCS pulled roughly $9 million more in bonds than were needed.
With the exception of the K – 8 and the addition at Potomac High School, bids received for virtually every new construction project or addition undertaken in the school division in the past few years have been well below the bonds pulled for those projects. Over the past couple of years PWCS has “issued” bonds for various projects totaling almost $137 million. The bids received for those projects totaled about $117 million. That leaves about $20 million