SAN DIEGO – More than a dozen San Diego County school officials are paid nearly a quarter-million dollars a year to make smart, important decisions for their school districts.

And taxpayers are getting massively ripped off – in more ways than one.

Not only are the salaries of these public officials absurdly high, but several of them decided it was a good idea to use shady “appreciation” bond financing to pay for school repairs that will eventually cost their constituents nearly 10 times the borrowed amount.

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In some school districts, the borrowed money will be awarded strictly to contractors that hire union labor, a policy that will drive up construction costs by as much as 15 percent.

In San Diego’s Poway Unified school district, officials last year borrowed $105 million from investors in a deal that will leave taxpayers with a $1 billion bill down the line, according to news reports.

The San Diego Unified School District borrowed $164 million in long-term bonds that will eventually cost $1.3 billion. Oceanside Unified is taking $30 million today for $280 million of debt. At Escondido Union schools, $27 million will cost $247 million.

“This is way worse than loan sharking,” Michael Turnipseed, executive director of the Kern County Taxpayers Association in central California, told the Voice of San Diego, the first local news outlet to break the bond story. “And Poway is the poster child. What they have done is absolutely insane.”

What’s amazing is that school officials sold these rotten deals to taxpayers with a promise not to raise taxes anytime soon. That’s because the districts won’t have to begin repaying their loans for 20 years.

Passing the bills to the kids

This kind of irresponsible borrowing should be illegal, and it is in some states, like Michigan. The “kick the can down the road” approach to school financing is a disgusting abuse of tax dollars that will make schools’ current financial problems exponentially worse later.

As a Fox Business commentary put it: “School administrators appear to have looked around at the sluggish economy and property tax revenues and figured, ‘Heck, why not defer now and pay nothing at all for decades? We’ll be dead by then.’”

“Poway, home to more than 34,000 students, is also a school district where school administrator and teacher compensation chew up 85 percent of its annual budget. And its expenses chronically exceed revenues, by nearly $40 million from 2009 to 2011,” according to Fox Business.

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“In two decades’ time, taxpayers in the Poway district will have to start paying about $50 million a year towards the loan – one-fifth of its current $250 million budget. However, right now, the district only receives about $11 million a year from homeowners towards paying off its bonds.”

The Poway district, in particular, has only been using about 3 percent of its budget, or $6.5 million per year, for building maintenance and upgrades, despite district records that show the need for $26 million in repairs, Fox Business reports.

That means because district officials neglected to plan for future maintenance and construction expenses, tomorrow’s taxpayers — many of them current students — will be forced to pay back $1 billion in future bond costs for new classroom and library computers, state-of-the-art wireless data systems, new alarm systems, green recyclable building materials, landscaping and other things, according to news reports.

But wait … there’s more.

In the San Diego Unified district, administrators borrowed almost $164 million from investors using capital appreciation bonds.

“The loan was part of 2008’s Proposition S, in which voters approved the district to borrow more than $2 billion to complete district-wide renovations and modernization,” the Voice of San Diego reports. “Just like Poway, San Diego Unified won’t start paying back those bonds for 20 years. The first payment is due in 2030. By the time the loan is fully paid back, in 2050, San Diego taxpayers will have paid back $1.25 billion, or about 7.6 times what the district borrowed in the first place.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, Kevin Dayton of LaborIssuesSolutions.com reports the San Diego school board has adopted a Project Labor Agreement, which mandates the district use union labor on construction projects, rather than going through the traditional competitive bidding process.

The National University System Institute for Policy Research in San Diego released a report last summer that shows California school construction jobs with Project Labor Agreements cost 13 to 15 percent more than those done with fair and open bid competition, Dayton reports.

Last month, the San Diego Unified school board also approved a resolution to put another $2.8 billion bond measure on the November ballot.

“In this case, voters will be considering the wisdom of government-mandated Project Labor Agreements as well as the wisdom of taxing the citizens and businesses of San Diego an additional $2.8 billion (plus billions more in interest) for school construction,” Dayton wrote.

What does it all mean?

San Diego County school officials have borrowed recklessly at the expense of the students and taxpayers they’re entrusted to serve, and have used their positions to secure sweet deals for their Big Labor buddies.

Meanwhile, San Diego Unified officials recently settled a deal with their teachers union that will shorten the school year for students by five days. As part of that agreement, they’ve also agreed to cut another 10 days off the school year if voters don’t approve a massive tax increase plan that will appear on the statewide November ballot.

San Diego area taxpayers are getting taken for a ride, students are being shortchanged, and school leaders and their Big Labor friends are raking it in.

If local residents and taxpayers want to put an end to this type of irresponsible management, they must stand up, expose the problems, and make their voices heard at the ballot box. Until public outrage boils over, residents can expect more of the same.

The Voice of San Diego has simplified the process for citizens to identify and learn more about high interest “appreciation” bonds issued by California school districts. We encourage taxpayers and parents to look into the bonds issued in their districts.

A detailed, step-by-step explanation of how to find the information is available here.