News
Finances Can Impact Use of MLSD Facilities
MOSES LAKE — Looking for places to save money in light of a serious financial deficit, Moses Lake School Board members will meet at 6 p.m. Monday to discuss water use, part of a broader discussion about the use of district facilities outside school hours. Recommendations include restrictions on summer use and facility rental fees for activities and events outside the district.
Interim Superintendent Carol Lewis said it’s costing the district a lot of money to water its campuses.
“Currently, as an organization, we are not in compliance with the city’s water restrictions and we are being fined for it,” Lewis said. “It’s a small amount compared to what we pay, but we want to be good citizens as a school district. Plus, it’s a big expense to water and mow the grass.”
Project manager Brian Sewell said if irrigation is reduced, usage will have to be reduced.
“For many of these schools, we will have to stop any activity over the summer,” he said. “Otherwise we will chew the ground.”
Lewis said he doesn’t think the district has many options.
“We know they will turn brown if we don’t (irrigate), but the expenses we hope to save are significant. We are in this crisis and we are talking about the need to save literally millions of dollars. And we could save a significant amount.”
Sewell said reduced maintenance in the field will increase the possibility of damage if they are used too much.
“We’re thinking about reducing their mowing for the rest of the season,” he said. “This will free up some manpower for other (tasks) within the district to help with some of these water (issues) that I have a plan to mitigate. By reducing extracurricular activities on the field, we will keep them protected for as long as possible.”
Sewell said he obtained some data from Moses Lake city officials about the cost of watering lawns at specific schools. Sage Point Elementary has a separate water meter for its irrigation system, and MLSD paid about $43,000 to water fields at Sage Point from January 2022 to May 2024. The district spent about $21,000 to irrigation at the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center during the same period. , Sewell said.
About half of the district’s elementary schools use city water for irrigation; Frontier and Endeavor high schools and Vanguard Academy are also in the city system. The transport hub too. The remaining facilities in the district have irrigation wells and there is the possibility of transferring some schools that use city water to wells belonging to the district.
District voters rejected a two-year maintenance and operations fee proposal for a second time in April. This was followed by the discovery that accounting errors had resulted in the district reducing spending on most of its reserves. Lewis said that in light of the financial situation, district officials will have to rethink policies for using MLSD facilities, at least for now.
“We talk about the theater, we talk about the pool, we talk about all of our buildings that are used for whatever reason — sports tournaments, sports practices, all that kind of stuff,” Lewis said. “It’s always good for a school district to be able to partner with the community and at a very, very low cost — or sometimes no cost — provide use to the community. Right now, we are not in a position to do this for free or at a very low cost.”
Use of the facilities is not just the use of a gym or a classroom, she said.
“Sometimes the janitor is already there and this is just part of what they are doing on a routine basis. But sometimes a custodian has to come in extra. Sometimes a team member needs to help,” Lewis said. “If we have a group that uses our facilities outside of times when employees would actually be there, we have to bring someone in and pay them to be there.”
Those expenses were not tracked separately, she said. She recommended suspending community use of school facilities until more information is available about expenses and a fee schedule can be developed. Right now, any use of the facilities would have to be paid for yourself, she said.
“Especially in a city like this, the community depends on our buildings,” Lewis said. “Therefore, it would be a priority to calculate (expenses) quickly. But we would have to create a fee structure that recovers our costs for now. And this would be one of those things where, when we have more money, we would be happy to take another look,”
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached by email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.