Finances may impact use of MLSD facilities

MOSES LAKE — Looking for places to save money in light of a serious financial shortfall, Moses Lake School Board members will meet at 6 p.m. Monday to discuss water use, part of a larger discussion on the use of district facilities outside school hours. Recommendations include restrictions on use in the summer and facility rental fees for non-district activities and events.  

Acting Superintendent Carol Lewis said it’s costing the district a lot of money to water its campuses. 

“We are not, currently, as an organization in compliance with the city’s water restrictions, and we’re getting fined for that,” Lewis said. “It’s kind of a small amount compared to what we pay, but we want to be good citizens as a school district. Plus it’s a major expense to water and mow our lawns.”

Project Manager Brian Sewell said if watering is reduced, use will have to be reduced.

“For a lot of these schools, we’re going to have to pause any activity on them over the summer,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll chew up the ground.”

Lewis said she doesn’t think the district has many options. 

“We know that they’re going to turn brown if we don’t (irrigate), but the expense that we’re expected to save is significant. We’re in this crisis and we’re talking about the need to save literally millions of dollars. And we could save a significant amount.”

Sewell said reduced field maintenance will increase the possibility of damage if they’re used too much.

“We are looking at reducing mowing them for the rest of the season,” he said. “That will free up some labor for other (tasks) within the district to help with some of these water (issues) I have a plan for mitigating. By reducing extracurricular activities on the field, we’ll keep them protected as long as possible.”  

Sewell said he got some data from Moses Lake city officials on 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 the fields at Sage Point from January 2022 to May 2024. The district spent about $21,000 for irrigation at the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center in the same period, Sewell said.

About half the district’s elementary schools are using city water for irrigation; Frontier and Endeavor middle schools and Vanguard Academy also are on the city system. So is the transportation center. The remaining district facilities have irrigation wells, and there is the potential to switch some schools that are using city water to district-owned wells.

District voters rejected a two-year maintenance and operations levy proposal for the second time in April. That was followed by the discovery that accounting errors had resulted in the district spending down most of its reserves. Lewis said in light of the financial situation, district officials will have to rethink the 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 get used for whatever reason — sports tournaments, sports practices, all those kinds of things,” Lewis said. “It always is a nice thing for a school district to be able to partner with the community and at a very, very low cost — or at no cost, sometimes — to provide use to the community. Right now, we are not in a position to do that for free, or for very little cost.”

Facility use isn’t only the use of a gym or a classroom, she said. 

“Sometimes the custodian is already there, and it’s just part of what they’re doing in the routine.  But sometimes a custodian has to come in extra. Sometimes a staff member has to come in extra,” Lewis said. “If we have a group that uses our facilities outside of times when staff 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 on the expenses and a fee schedule can be developed. At the moment any facility use would have to pay for itself, she said. 

“In a town like this, especially, the community depends on our buildings,” Lewis said. “So it would be a priority to figure (expenses) out pretty quickly. But we would have to come up with a fee structure that recovers our costs for right now. And this would be one of those things where, when we have more money, we would gladly take another look at it,”

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.