New High School in Milton Delayed?

I attended a meeting this evening at Milton High School held by Katie Reeves who is the Fulton County School Board Member for District 2. Most of the meeting covered items regarding charter petitions for schools in South Fulton, board member recognition and other policy items.

However, the first part of the meeting covered SPLOST III and the proposed new high school at Bethany and Cogburn. You see, SPLOST’s are levied in 5 year increments with SPLOST III running until 2012.  The issue being raised affects whether the school gets built by 2012 or pushed out.  Sales tax revenue is down with a projected shortfall of $174M, which will not leave enough revenue to handle all the 900 proposed projects which includes the new High School at Bethany and Cogburn. 

Pushing the schedule for the school out seems to solve the problem on the surface, but by 2012 the projections are that Milton HS will be over capacity by 785 students and Roswell HS will be over capacity by 500.

Katie Reeves believes that the sales tax projections are low, that we will have the funds to complete the school and should push to have the new High School built on schedule. If it’s not built by 2012 then funding will need to come from the next run of SPLOST.  A delay could be further complicated by the fact that renewing SPLOST will have to be done in a general election.  One that will occur right around the time that the County of Milton may be voted on.

Whether the tax revenue projections are low or high, I have to agree with Katie Reeves. Even with slower growth right now, we all know that people will continue to move into Alpharetta and Milton for the very same reasons we live here; great schools and quality of life.  We should do everything we can to ensure the new school is built on time and avoid even further over-crowding in the future.