Lake Delton Elementary School’s condition is deteriorating, and Dells area school officials are beginning serious discussions on a replacement.
During a board work session on March 13, financial and construction advisors spoke to the School District of Wisconsin Dells board regarding costs and bond capabilities for a potential future project. The board and advisors also discussed renovations and other improvements to existing facilities.
District administrator Terry Slack said the district hopes to have a measure regarding a future project on the fall 2024 ballot, which would coincide with the next U.S. presidential election.
“We’re trying to approach it from a conservative perspective,” said Slack, alluding to how the district discussed the projects assuming the highest possible costs at this time. “At the same token, the price of projects has not gone down and probably will not go down. We know that our beloved Lake Delton (Elementary) School is on borrowed time.”
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Slack added that an increasing amount of residents, and therefore more students, live in the Wisconsin Dells/Lake Delton area west of the Wisconsin River.
Preliminary estimates indicate that a new one-story school would be a roughly $55 million project, while a two-story building would likely cost about $1 million more. Other estimates were for renovations to Wisconsin Dells Middle School and its entrance, as well as Spring Hill Elementary and possibly building a centralized district office. Estimates for those totaled nearly a combined $11 million.
“I don’t see anything emerging before (fall 2024),” said Slack, adding that they need to “close out the donated projects, get some time to develop the interest of the community. We felt like November of 2024 is probably the earliest this would take place, if it’s going to take place.”
Justin Johnson, a project manager for construction firm CG Schmidt, discussed project costs and other details at the session. He said that a prospective new elementary school would be modeled similarily to that of the high school, which was completed in 2020, but also indicated that any current ideas are in their beginning stages.
“When we do this very early budgeting, we have to pull off of what we know,” said Johnson.
Johnson added that he and Slack toured Spring Hill and WDMS for possible renovations, as well as began discussions on a district office that early projections indicate will be just less than 7,000 square feet. All projects (new elementary school, renovations to Spring Hill and WDMS, a new secured entry at WDMS, and a district office) figure to fall between $65 and $66 million.
Jordan Masnica, vice president of public finance at Baird, a Milwaukee-based financial management firm, explained the mill rate impact (cost per $1,000 valuation) impact of a prospective project. He said that debt payments would begin in 2025 with a referendum passage in 2024.
“We generated a projected mill rate impact of 41 cents for referendum debt,” said Masnica of a prospective $60 million referendum for the new projects. “The reason it’s so low is that we’re structuring around existing debt. Because the district has proactively managed that levy, it’s setting that base in the current year.”
Masnica added that Baird assumes a slight increase in property valuation in the district during the coming years. The passage of such a referendum would get the district to just over 23% of its current debt capacity, which is just over $356 million, as the district’s equalized property value in 2022 was roughly $3.56 billion. Debt capacity for a district is 10% of its equalized value.
The largest donated project, which is currently under construction, is the auditorium at Wisconsin Dells High School.
