BRADENTON, Fla. — In south Florida, the nation's sixth-largest public school system needs an infusion of capital funding that only Broward County School District voters can deliver.
The $800 million in general obligation bonds sought by Broward on the Nov. 4 ballot is among the largest of such referendums facing voters in the Southeast this year.
Across the region, voters are already casting early ballots for borrowings to finance schools, transportation, housing, and other infrastructure needs.
In Florida and Louisiana, voters are also being asked to protect funds for environmentally sensitive lands and reefs. In Tennessee and Georgia, voters are deciding measures to limit or ban taxes.
The election is critically important to Broward County public school students, school and rating agency officials say.
If voters agree with the system's request to authorize $800 million in GO bonds, it will be the first such approval in three decades for the 99-year-old district.
The bonds would cost a homeowner with a house having a taxable value of $200,000 about $50 per year, school officials say.
"Since 2008, the district capital budget has been devastated by funding cuts and deductions with a total loss to our district of nearly $2 billion," said Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie. "The general obligation bond will provide the funds necessary for us to meet critical needs facing our schools."
The lack of capital funds is due in part to state funding cutbacks and legislative limits on local tax increases.
It has prevented the district from fixing leaky roofs and air conditioning systems, and upgrading computers, he said.
The school district, headquartered Fort Lauderdale, serves 225,000 students in 238 schools throughout Broward County. Another 38,000 pupils are served by 102 charter schools, which the district oversees.
District officials said they sought the bond referendum because 40% of the school system's buildings are more than 25 years old. Bond proceeds would enable the district to address the most critically needed safety and security improvements, technology upgrades, and facility repairs and replacements.
The GO bonds would be sold over five years with 30-year maturities. The financing will address a portion of the $3 billion in capital needs the district has identified.
To reassure voters that bond proceeds will be spent appropriately, the district said it would appoint an independent community Bond Oversight Committee to review and report on all bond-financed expenditures.
"We believe that absent additional funding mechanisms, the district will not be able to adequately provide for long- and short-term capital needs," Moody's analyst John Incorvaia said in an Oct. 8 report assigning a MIG-1 rating to the district's competitive sale of $125 million in tax anticipation notes.
Failure to obtain voter approval for the GO bonds on the Nov. 4 ballot "would create a hardship for officials in adequately funding capital needs," he added.
On Tuesday, the Broward school district awarded the TANs to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Proceeds provide for cash-flow needs until property tax revenues come in later this fall.
The Broward County School Board currently has no outstanding GO debt. Its long-term debt portfolio includes about $41 million of capital outlay bonds issued on the district's behalf by the state, and $1.7 billion in certificates of participation.
The COPs are rated A1 by Moody's Investors Service, A by Standard and Poor's, and A-plus by Fitch Ratings. Moody's assigns an Aa3 issuer rating to the district.
Other infrastructure financing needs face voters around the Southeast.
Broward's neighbor to the south, Miami-Dade County is asking ask voters for permission to issue up to $393 million in general obligation bonds to repair the county's 90-year-old civil courthouse and build a replacement facility.
It could be a tough sell where voters among the population of 2.6 million have dipped into their pockets in recent years to support major tax increases for other basic infrastructure needs.
Last year, Miami-Dade voters approved the county's request to issue $830 million in GO bonds for capital needs at the public Jackson Health System. In 2012, they also agreed to the issuance of $1.2 billion in GOs for the Miami-Dade County School District's capital program.
So far, few people have disputed that the existing courthouse is "old, broken and falling down," as Chief Judge Bertila Soto described the justice facility last month.
Skeptics, however, say that the referendum is premature because the county has not provided concrete plans for the project.
If Miami-Dade voters pass the $393 million GO bond request, $25 million of the financing would be used for emergency repairs to keep the existing civil courthouse open while a new facility is constructed. At last report, it had not been determined where a new courthouse would be built.
In Florida and Louisiana, voters face environmental funding questions Nov. 4.
Traditional bond financing for such programs in the Sunshine state the past six years dried up when the recession took a toll on real estate sales, from which documentary stamp taxes funded conservation programs.
Since 2009, 95% of the tax proceeds not needed to pay debt service were diverted to the state's general fund, according to the Florida Water and Land Conservation, a coalition of statewide conservation organizations spearheading the state's Amendment 1 measure Nov. 4.
The amendment would dedicate one-third of the net revenues from the state's documentary stamp tax on real estate to land and water preservation programs for 20 years. The revenues can be leveraged, though the proposed law does not require it.
In Louisiana, environmental advocates are pushing Amendment 8 to place protective conservation measures into the state's constitution with the Artificial Reef Development Fund.
The fund already exists, and allows oil and gas companies to put half the savings they realize from decommissioning platforms that are then used to create artificial reefs. Revenues from those projects are supposed to be used to maintain and build new sites, which attract marine habitat.
Since 2009, however, the Legislature has dipped into the reef fund for $46 million to prop up budget shortfalls, according to the Times-Picayune. If Amendment 1 passes, revenues in the fund must be used for siting, monitoring and managing artificial reef systems.
"The history of this fund being a target for balancing the budget is evidence that it must be sheltered from future sweeps with the strongest protection possible," Louisiana Wildlife Federation director Rebecca Triche told the Times-Picayune.
Louisiana voters will also be asked to vote on Amendment 4, which would establish a Transportation Infrastructure Bank in the constitution.
The amendment would authorize public funds to be invested in a TIB, so the funds could be loaned, pledged, or used to guarantee eligible transportation projects. If passed, the amendment would not actually establish the bank or a funding source, though the Legislature would be empowered to do both.
Other major transportation initiatives are also aimed at providing alternative funding to ease congestion.
In the Atlanta suburb of Clayton County, voters are being asked if they want a 1-cent sales tax increase to fund bus - and potentially rail - service that would be provided by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.
Currently, Fulton and DeKalb counties along with Atlanta fund MARTA's capital needs for service in those areas with their own dedicated sales tax.
If Clayton voters authorize the tax in their county, it would fund the first major expansion of MARTA's bus and rail system in years.
In St. Petersburg, Fla., the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority is banking on voter support to advance a $2.2 billion program called the Greenlight Pinellas Plan to increase bus service by 65% and fund the county's first light-rail system.
Pinellas voters are being asked to swap a property tax that PSTA now receives for a 1-cent transit sales tax, increasing the county's tax rate to 8% from 7%. The property tax currently brings in about $34 million annually, but the sales tax would increase the transit agency's budget to as high as $130 million and would allow it to leverage the tax.
Other Southeast referendums of interest Nov. 4 include a $146 million GO bond issue sought by Charlotte, N.C., to pay for transportation, neighborhoods, and housing programs.
Fairfax County, Va., is also seeking voter approval to issue $100 million in GOs for transportation improvements.
Tax issues will also be on the ballot in Georgia and Tennessee.
Amendment A on the statewide ballot in Georgia would establish the Income Tax Rate Cap, which would prohibit the state from increasing the maximum state income tax rate above the rate in effect on January 1, 2015.
In Tennessee, where there currently is no personal income tax, voters are being asked to memorialize the prohibition in the state constitution.
