Cyndi Loza

A legislature-appointed panel, selected to identify sources of money for Washoe County School District, will focus on renovations for existing schools and let the district worry about money to build nine new ones.

“The committee just feels that there is such a pressing need to bring our older schools up to a standard, and it absolutely has to be a priority,” said Assemblywoman Debbie Smith, D-Sparks and a member of the School Construction and Revitalization Advisory Committee that met Tuesday at Reno High School.

After nearly six months of discussion, the committee did not vote on a recommendation and will meet again March 19.

Constructing the nine schools would cost about $487 million, said Elizabeth Wright, district accountability and communications manager. She said the school district expects about $374 million would be available from bond sales authorized by voters in 2002 that must be renewed by voter approval every 10 years.

Officials have said the district will need five elementary schools, three middle schools and one high school by 2014 to accommodate more than 8,000 new students expected during the next six years.

Wright said if the revenue from the bonds does not produce enough money to build nine schools, another source of money must be identified.

“That isn’t to say taking care of growth isn’t important, but I think we need to use another source of funding to deal with that,” Superintendent Paul Dugan said.

The school board has not discussed using the serial bond money to build new schools, Trustee Jonnie Pullman said.

“Depending on how the property tax revenues money goes, whether it goes up or down, there will be more or less of the $300 million of the roll-over money that will be available,” Pullman said.

Approval for the rollover bonds expires in 2012. Dugan said the district must present a ballot question this year or in 2010 or 2012 to continue the program that alows the district to sell bonds in the same amount that has been retired, preventing a tax rate increase.

Since September of last year, the committee has met to find sources of money for the school district that might require voter approval Nov. 4, such as authority for a bond sale or tax increase.

“Not only is it not easy to choose one option, two options, three options, but we needed to get our arms around what the school district actually needed,” said state Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno and chairman of the committee created by the Legislature.

The group must make recommendations by May 1.