Jacob Redmond
Well-Known Member
When Colorado residents legalized the retail sale of marijuana in 2013, some supported the measure because a portion of tax revenue was destined to boost school funding.
However, Poudre School District will not receive a dime of that money. Fort Collins-area parents who see critical needs in the district’s 50 schools, including a lack of air conditioning in some schools, are angry.
The constitutional amendment to legalize retail pot sales promised the first $40 million collected from a 15 percent excise tax on unprocessed retail marijuana would be used to help Colorado’s 178 public school districts.
The tax goes into the public school capital construction assistance fund and is transferred to the state’s Building Excellent Schools Today, or BEST, competitive grant program. Funding awarded through the program established in 2008 can be used for construction of new schools, renovation of existing public school facilities or addressing critical public health and safety issues.
PSD has no immediate plans to apply for the grants, said budget manager Dave Montoya.
“Typically BEST is funding districts that have highly critical needs and are struggling to fund those needs within the district,” he said. “Right now we are not pursuing the BEST program and wouldn’t get any direct revenue from pot sales.”
In the last calendar year, $11.3 million in excise taxes flowed into the capital construction assistance fund. That money is paired with other revenue sources to fund the BEST program.
Some PSD parents say the district is being short-sighted in not applying for a piece of the pot money.
Samara Geist, the mother of a fifth-grader at non air-conditioned Bauder Elementary School in Fort Collins, said sweltering classroom temperatures in August are a public health and safety issue that could be solved with a little help from the marijuana excise tax.
Of PSD’s 50 schools, nine are air conditioned and 20 have been retrofitted with tempered air systems that can cool temperatures by about 10 degrees. These systems improve conditions, several principals have said, but don’t have a big impact when temperatures reach the 90s.
Previous estimates are that it would cost between $40 million and $50 million to install air conditioning in all PSD schools. That price tag was deemed too steep at the time. PSD has launched a $200,000 study of the feasibility of installing air conditioning in all its schools, knowing that associated costs have likely gone up since that 2007 estimate.
Teachers are tempted to prop doors open to create more air flow during warm days, Geist said. But in this era of school shootings, classroom doors are supposed to be closed and locked.
“It’s a safety issue when I see the doors propped open because it’s so hot,” Geist said.
The district will push back the start of the school year starting this August to avoid starting class during the hottest part of the summer, but it is not enough, she said.
Geist voted to legalize retail marijuana sales, partially because some of the money would go to schools.
“Why not get that revenue? It makes the kids safer and (pot) is not a hidden taboo thing anymore,” she said.
Her son will attend Blevins Middle School, which also lacks air conditioning, next year, “Really, we’re doing so well that we’re not going to apply for the money? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Montoya said it is highly unlikely Poudre School District would get a BEST grant, especially if it were for air conditioning.
“It’s unlikely we would qualify because we can issue bonds” to renovate and build schools and address critical needs, he said. “We have proven we can do that. We don’t have the large health and safety issues that other districts have, and when you start chipping away at that and given how much money is flowing in to BEST, it’s unlikely we would get anything.”
Heavy Competition For BEST Dollars
Last year, in the 2014-15 grant cycle, the BEST program received $76 million in requests for $16.5 million in available funds, according to Scott Newell, director of the office of capital construction at the Colorado Department of Education. Of the requests, the program funded 26 projects in 20 districts.
This year, with the pot excise tax trending toward $16 million, Newell said his department will recommend awarding about $50 million in grants.
Typically, the BEST program gets about three times the number of requests than it can grant, he said.
Funding available during the 2014-15 grant period didn’t include taxes paid on recreational pot sales because they didn’t begin until Jan. 1, 2014. No grants have been awarded yet for 2015.
Applications are due in May and will be reviewed by the BEST board. Recommendations are reviewed and approved by the state board in June, Newell said.
The additional marijuana revenue is timely for the BEST program, which reached a statutory cap last year on grants it could issue through bonds, Newell said, “That left us with just cash (grants) so we did a lot of smaller projects.”
Poudre School District has applied for BEST funds in the past, Newell said, “but typically larger school districts like PSD or those along the I-25 corridor look to local bond elections” to fund capital improvements.
PSD received $580,000 in BEST funds in 2010-2011 to help replace fire alarms at multiple facilities, money that was matched through a $16 million mill levy override and $120 million bond issue approved by voters in 2010.
The override and bond issue added about $130 per year to the tax bill on a $275,000 home within the district, officials said. The money was used for technology, to increase safety and security in buildings and to provide for needed upgrades, maintenance and repairs for schools.
Air conditioning might not be considered a public health or safety issue in a school, and as such might not qualify for a BEST grant, Newell said.
“Unless there was an old mechanical system and it was not heating the building and stuff like that,” he said. “Those things we fund all the time.”
Parent Marci MacCormick said PSD is right to eschew BEST money. Her daughter went to Werner Elementary last year and attends Mountain Sage Community School, a district charter school, this year.
“Isn’t PSD one of the most affluent districts in the state?” she asked. “I think it’s honorable of them to bow out rather than taking the money out from under districts that really do have pressing public health and safety needs.”
Median household income for a Larimer County family of four was $75,800 in 2013, higher than both the state and national averages, according to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Schools like Werner that don’t have air conditioning are uncomfortable, MacCormick said, “but for three days?”
A Growing Business
Excise tax paid on marijuana is trending toward $16 million in 2015 and Newell said that figure will likely increase as more municipalities allow recreational pot shops in their communities.
“It’s hard to say how much it will grow ... but right now looking at monthly deposits from the Department of Revenue it is trending toward $16 million,” he said.
Recreational marijuana sales became legal on Jan. 1, 2014, but no shops appeared in Fort Collins until mid-June after the city lifted a temporary ban on retail shops in March. Organic Alternatives, 346 E. Mountain Ave., was the first to open its doors in mid-June after getting the necessary city licenses.
Colorado has issued seven licenses for retail marijuana shops in the Fort Collins area, including two in unincorporated Larimer County.
Larimer County commissioners have said they will allow only two licenses for each aspect of recreational marijuana regulated by the state: cultivation, retail sales, infused product manufacturing and testing. With the two recreational licenses already claimed, no other recreational marijuana stores will be allowed in unincorporated Larimer County.
At the end of last year, 28 Colorado counties allowed retail cannabis shops.
Fort Collins won’t release tax revenue generated by its retail pot shops because there are still too few stores to mask revenue from each. Larimer County didn’t break out its revenue until July when more than four shops were open in the county. From August through December, the county collected about $582,000 in taxes on retail marijuana sales.
Easy Come, Easy Go
Today, the statewide revenue picture from retail and medical marijuana industries remains cloudy.
In the first full year of retail sales, the state collected $44 million in tax revenue, less than the projected $70 million but enough to trigger potential taxpayer refunds under the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, or TABOR. The 1992 state constitutional amendment requires Colorado to repay taxpayers when the state collects more than the limit in a formula based on inflation and population growth.
The estimated refund stands at about $59 million, said Sen. Pat Steadman, a Democrat and member of the Joint Budget Committee.
Steadman plans to introduce a bill in late March or early April, after the next revenue projections are available, that would ask voters to allow the state to retain the tax revenue. If the measure gets by the House and Senate, it could go to voters in November, Steadman said in a telephone interview.
If voters support retention, Steadman said he would ask to transfer $49 million to the BEST program on top of what it has already received.
No matter which way a vote goes, Steadman said money paid into the BEST program would remain in the program. If the money has to be returned to taxpayers, he said, the state’s general fund would have to make up for what was in the BEST program.
The $16 million estimate for excise tax collections is “well short of $40 million. That’s the number people saw on the ballot and we haven’t hit that number,” Steadman said. “Here’s an opportunity. It would be easy to transfer the money to the BEST program. The additional money would be put to good use.”
But even if there’s more money in the BEST program, it likely won’t filter into PSD.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Fort Collins schools won?t get marijuana money
Author: Pat Ferrier
Contact: The Coloradoan Contact Form | Fort Collins Coloradoan
Photo Credit: None Found
Website: The Coloradoan | Fort Collins news, community, entertainment, yellow pages and classifieds. Serving Fort Collins, Colorado | coloradoan.com
However, Poudre School District will not receive a dime of that money. Fort Collins-area parents who see critical needs in the district’s 50 schools, including a lack of air conditioning in some schools, are angry.
The constitutional amendment to legalize retail pot sales promised the first $40 million collected from a 15 percent excise tax on unprocessed retail marijuana would be used to help Colorado’s 178 public school districts.
The tax goes into the public school capital construction assistance fund and is transferred to the state’s Building Excellent Schools Today, or BEST, competitive grant program. Funding awarded through the program established in 2008 can be used for construction of new schools, renovation of existing public school facilities or addressing critical public health and safety issues.
PSD has no immediate plans to apply for the grants, said budget manager Dave Montoya.
“Typically BEST is funding districts that have highly critical needs and are struggling to fund those needs within the district,” he said. “Right now we are not pursuing the BEST program and wouldn’t get any direct revenue from pot sales.”
In the last calendar year, $11.3 million in excise taxes flowed into the capital construction assistance fund. That money is paired with other revenue sources to fund the BEST program.
Some PSD parents say the district is being short-sighted in not applying for a piece of the pot money.
Samara Geist, the mother of a fifth-grader at non air-conditioned Bauder Elementary School in Fort Collins, said sweltering classroom temperatures in August are a public health and safety issue that could be solved with a little help from the marijuana excise tax.
Of PSD’s 50 schools, nine are air conditioned and 20 have been retrofitted with tempered air systems that can cool temperatures by about 10 degrees. These systems improve conditions, several principals have said, but don’t have a big impact when temperatures reach the 90s.
Previous estimates are that it would cost between $40 million and $50 million to install air conditioning in all PSD schools. That price tag was deemed too steep at the time. PSD has launched a $200,000 study of the feasibility of installing air conditioning in all its schools, knowing that associated costs have likely gone up since that 2007 estimate.
Teachers are tempted to prop doors open to create more air flow during warm days, Geist said. But in this era of school shootings, classroom doors are supposed to be closed and locked.
“It’s a safety issue when I see the doors propped open because it’s so hot,” Geist said.
The district will push back the start of the school year starting this August to avoid starting class during the hottest part of the summer, but it is not enough, she said.
Geist voted to legalize retail marijuana sales, partially because some of the money would go to schools.
“Why not get that revenue? It makes the kids safer and (pot) is not a hidden taboo thing anymore,” she said.
Her son will attend Blevins Middle School, which also lacks air conditioning, next year, “Really, we’re doing so well that we’re not going to apply for the money? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Montoya said it is highly unlikely Poudre School District would get a BEST grant, especially if it were for air conditioning.
“It’s unlikely we would qualify because we can issue bonds” to renovate and build schools and address critical needs, he said. “We have proven we can do that. We don’t have the large health and safety issues that other districts have, and when you start chipping away at that and given how much money is flowing in to BEST, it’s unlikely we would get anything.”
Heavy Competition For BEST Dollars
Last year, in the 2014-15 grant cycle, the BEST program received $76 million in requests for $16.5 million in available funds, according to Scott Newell, director of the office of capital construction at the Colorado Department of Education. Of the requests, the program funded 26 projects in 20 districts.
This year, with the pot excise tax trending toward $16 million, Newell said his department will recommend awarding about $50 million in grants.
Typically, the BEST program gets about three times the number of requests than it can grant, he said.
Funding available during the 2014-15 grant period didn’t include taxes paid on recreational pot sales because they didn’t begin until Jan. 1, 2014. No grants have been awarded yet for 2015.
Applications are due in May and will be reviewed by the BEST board. Recommendations are reviewed and approved by the state board in June, Newell said.
The additional marijuana revenue is timely for the BEST program, which reached a statutory cap last year on grants it could issue through bonds, Newell said, “That left us with just cash (grants) so we did a lot of smaller projects.”
Poudre School District has applied for BEST funds in the past, Newell said, “but typically larger school districts like PSD or those along the I-25 corridor look to local bond elections” to fund capital improvements.
PSD received $580,000 in BEST funds in 2010-2011 to help replace fire alarms at multiple facilities, money that was matched through a $16 million mill levy override and $120 million bond issue approved by voters in 2010.
The override and bond issue added about $130 per year to the tax bill on a $275,000 home within the district, officials said. The money was used for technology, to increase safety and security in buildings and to provide for needed upgrades, maintenance and repairs for schools.
Air conditioning might not be considered a public health or safety issue in a school, and as such might not qualify for a BEST grant, Newell said.
“Unless there was an old mechanical system and it was not heating the building and stuff like that,” he said. “Those things we fund all the time.”
Parent Marci MacCormick said PSD is right to eschew BEST money. Her daughter went to Werner Elementary last year and attends Mountain Sage Community School, a district charter school, this year.
“Isn’t PSD one of the most affluent districts in the state?” she asked. “I think it’s honorable of them to bow out rather than taking the money out from under districts that really do have pressing public health and safety needs.”
Median household income for a Larimer County family of four was $75,800 in 2013, higher than both the state and national averages, according to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Schools like Werner that don’t have air conditioning are uncomfortable, MacCormick said, “but for three days?”
A Growing Business
Excise tax paid on marijuana is trending toward $16 million in 2015 and Newell said that figure will likely increase as more municipalities allow recreational pot shops in their communities.
“It’s hard to say how much it will grow ... but right now looking at monthly deposits from the Department of Revenue it is trending toward $16 million,” he said.
Recreational marijuana sales became legal on Jan. 1, 2014, but no shops appeared in Fort Collins until mid-June after the city lifted a temporary ban on retail shops in March. Organic Alternatives, 346 E. Mountain Ave., was the first to open its doors in mid-June after getting the necessary city licenses.
Colorado has issued seven licenses for retail marijuana shops in the Fort Collins area, including two in unincorporated Larimer County.
Larimer County commissioners have said they will allow only two licenses for each aspect of recreational marijuana regulated by the state: cultivation, retail sales, infused product manufacturing and testing. With the two recreational licenses already claimed, no other recreational marijuana stores will be allowed in unincorporated Larimer County.
At the end of last year, 28 Colorado counties allowed retail cannabis shops.
Fort Collins won’t release tax revenue generated by its retail pot shops because there are still too few stores to mask revenue from each. Larimer County didn’t break out its revenue until July when more than four shops were open in the county. From August through December, the county collected about $582,000 in taxes on retail marijuana sales.
Easy Come, Easy Go
Today, the statewide revenue picture from retail and medical marijuana industries remains cloudy.
In the first full year of retail sales, the state collected $44 million in tax revenue, less than the projected $70 million but enough to trigger potential taxpayer refunds under the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, or TABOR. The 1992 state constitutional amendment requires Colorado to repay taxpayers when the state collects more than the limit in a formula based on inflation and population growth.
The estimated refund stands at about $59 million, said Sen. Pat Steadman, a Democrat and member of the Joint Budget Committee.
Steadman plans to introduce a bill in late March or early April, after the next revenue projections are available, that would ask voters to allow the state to retain the tax revenue. If the measure gets by the House and Senate, it could go to voters in November, Steadman said in a telephone interview.
If voters support retention, Steadman said he would ask to transfer $49 million to the BEST program on top of what it has already received.
No matter which way a vote goes, Steadman said money paid into the BEST program would remain in the program. If the money has to be returned to taxpayers, he said, the state’s general fund would have to make up for what was in the BEST program.
The $16 million estimate for excise tax collections is “well short of $40 million. That’s the number people saw on the ballot and we haven’t hit that number,” Steadman said. “Here’s an opportunity. It would be easy to transfer the money to the BEST program. The additional money would be put to good use.”
But even if there’s more money in the BEST program, it likely won’t filter into PSD.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Fort Collins schools won?t get marijuana money
Author: Pat Ferrier
Contact: The Coloradoan Contact Form | Fort Collins Coloradoan
Photo Credit: None Found
Website: The Coloradoan | Fort Collins news, community, entertainment, yellow pages and classifieds. Serving Fort Collins, Colorado | coloradoan.com
