Gilroy
– The city council grudgingly agreed Wednesday night to
contribute $2.2 million to build a second gym at Christopher High
School.
By Christopher Quirk and Serdar Tumgoren
Staff Writers
Gilroy – The city council grudgingly agreed Wednesday night to contribute $2.2 million to build a second gym at Christopher High School.
The informal vote laid to rest two days of unease for the Gilroy Unified School District, which faced the prospect of scrapping plans for the “joint-use” facility if it lost $5 million in combined city and state funds.
The gym’s fate was thrown into question Monday night, when council members balked at the expense amidst a budget season in which short-term funding for an arts center and other city projects may be threatened by a multi-million dollar land deal. Council agreed earlier this month to explore the possible $12.4-million purchase of Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park in west Gilroy, a deal officials say could save the city tens of millions of dollars in the next 20 years.
“I said Monday night that if the gym is something that would impede the arts center or Gilroy Gardens – if that becomes a reality – that it would need to go on the waiting list,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said Wednesday after a budget workshop. “The high point in all this is that the city and school district worked out a solution.”
To win council approval, the school district agreed to push back deadlines for city payments on the gym and an aquatics center, another joint-use facility planned for the new high school.
“We’re very appreciative of the city (being willing) to re-juggle their budget and work through this with the district'” said Paul Bunton, the architect for the new school. “Right now the joint-use gym … is critical to the financing of Christopher High School. The district would not be able to build the second gym or wouldn’t be able to do something else on the project (without the funding).”
Without city funding, the $7.4 million gymnasium would not have qualified as a joint-use facility and the school district, in turn, would lose eligibility for $3 million in state funds already factored into the cost of Christopher High School.
The district would have been left to cover the entire $7.4 million itself – a difficult task given a $13 million deficit in its facilities budget.
Council members denied committing to help finance the new gym during discussions with the school district last summer.
“Our intention at the time was that the needs are there, but the gym was not something we committed to,” Pinheiro said.
City Administrator Jay Baksa had the same recollection.
“We said we’d try to work as best we can on the gym,” he said. “They seemed to take that as more than just working with them.”
He said the city did not learn of the “time pressure” for the gym payment until late December. The project could be jeopardized since the state has capped funding for joint-use facilities this year at $29 million, according to GUSD Assistant Superintendent Steve Brinkman, assistant superintendent of business services.
The district met with council in the third week of December and at that time got informal approval for the gym, Brinkman said.
“We first surfaced this need for speed in December and indicated that whoever got their application in first was first in line for those funds,” Brinkman said to Pinheiro and the council.
Tensions eased Wednesday night with the advent of a new funding timeline. Under the new payment schedule, the city’s contribution to the gym is set for July 2010 – three years after the district originally expected the funds. Similarly, a $4.3-million payment for an already-approved aquatics center at the new high school was pushed back a year to July 2009.
The new arrangement “allows us to have a positive fund balance, just barely, in the (fiscal) year 2011-2012.” said Baksa, who hammered out the deal with school district staff. “After that, we start building back up.”
The school district was never averse to changing the timeline, but rather did not know that the council wanted it changed, said Bunton.
“There really isn’t any damage to the district from the new payment dates,” he said.
The miscommunication regarding the gym highlights the need for regular policy discussions between council and school board members, said school board Trustee Jaime Rosso. The groups have missed four quarterly policy meetings in the course of three years.
“We need each other … to make it work,” he said.
The informal agreement approved Wednesday night still be ratified in a formal council resolution. The council must also sign the application – which the district prepared three months earlier – to send to the state for the joint-use funding.
Should the council sign on and the state approve, the $3 million would arrive this fall, about the time the district will break ground at the site of the new high school off Day Road.
At that point, it will be a time to celebrate, not only for the school district, but the city as well, said Darrel Taylor, district interim superintendent.
“We’re together in this, the school district and the city,'” he said.
