And thank you for joining us as we present this brief information session for you tonight.
My name is Corey Murphy. I'm the superintendent of Aiken County Schools. And again, thank you
for joining us. I wanted to just give you some what we consider our closing argument for what
happened with our last penny sales tax referendum. And hopefully give you some information that
helps you make a decision moving forward into this next penny sales tax referendum
them and basically give you an overview of the plans that we have in store for Agin County
schools and to make sure our students have what we would consider first class learning
spaces.
So I begin the presentation by explaining to folks that there are no state or federal
funds that actually provide for the building of schools.
All the money we get from the state of South Carolina from the federal government are
are designed to maintain our employees' salaries and things of that nature, but they do not
go to build new schools.
What we typically have used in the past has been called the 8% funds.
8% funds are Aiken County's ability, Aiken County Schools ability to issue 8% bonds
every year of the taxable base in the county itself.
Our 8% funds equal about $20 million, and using $20 million at about 15, 20 years ago,
we were able to actually build schools, sometimes piecemeal over several years.
But over the last few years, our 8% funds have remained stagnant or constant,
but the price of buildings have gone up greatly.
So about 20 years ago, we were able to build an elementary school for around $10 million.
So with the 8% funds, that would be sufficient to build a school.
As of today, to build a new elementary school will cost approximately $50 million.
And so you'd see that those 8% funds, half of which we need to use to maintain the buildings, roofs, carpet, painting, flooring,
we'd have to use 100% of that for multiple years just to build one school.
So 8% funds simply are not sufficient to build new schools.
And so in 1976, we had a 30-mil tax increase, and that allowed us to build what we consider
our three, well, what we recently considered our three newest high schools, which were Silverbluff,
Midland Valley, and South vacant high school.
They were all built in 1980, and up until 2014, you would hear us say, well, one of
the newer schools, the new schools.
But those schools are over 40 years of age right now, and we only build them to
last about 50 years. And so as you can see the roofs, the design and the structures are
really not what I would say are on par with what current standards are. And so those schools
are really showing their age and that kind of helped us get to where we are today with
identifying which schools would be on these projects. In 2014 of course we had our very
first penny sales tax referendum, whereas we added one penny to the local option sales
taxes, basically things that do not include unprepared food, medicine, as well as some
other items in the area that will not be taxed.
But what that did give us is approximately $188 million.
And again, in 2014 numbers that allowed us to do quite a lot of projects.
We actually have exceeded what we projected to get that $188 million last year, and so between 2023 and 2024,
we actually are in what I would consider the bonus years, where we're actually still bringing in around,
I think we're at $216 million, and that's allowed us not only to meet the original objectives of the penny sales tax,
but we also were far exceeding it. So we've gone on and we've circled back to some of those schools
and added some projects that we thought in no way we'd have an opportunity to build but we're excited
about those. Also in 2018 we had a $90 million bond referendum that saw some a lot of improvements to
Midland Valley High School and some of our area elementary schools, Belvedere, Millbrook, and
Hammond Hill to name a few. So we've had some chances to actually improve a lot of our schools
but again in Aiken County we have over 40 schools and I've only mentioned a handful that
have received substantial improvements and so while we've done a lot of great
work we've got a lot of work to go.
I wanted to give you a few more facts I
think I rattled off a few earlier but the original penny sales tax started in
2014 and the tax began to collect in 2015 and the projects have to be
outlined on the ballot so we're not allowed to take the money from the
penny sales tax projects and just use them all throughout the district as we
if it's not named on the ballot, we cannot use it.
Again, we were projected to bring in $188 million,
but we've exceeded that as of year 9.
And this is very important.
For those that don't have students in school and say,
well, why do I want to put a penny towards our school,
understand that there's also a provision in the referendum
where we take 10% of the monies collected
and apply that towards property tax relief.
That means, even if you don't have a kid in school, you're going to see a benefit.
For every $100,000 of home you have, you'll receive a rebate of about $114.
If you have a rental property, that discount is actually up to $172 per profit, per $100,000.
And if we do not get a successful referendum here in 2024, the deal will not automatically
renew and the penny sales tax will expire in February of 2025.
Now just go over a few of the projects that we were able to complete with the penny sales
tax and you can take a look at some of the beautiful outcomes there.
Lavelle McCamble was built in 1920 and up until 2015-2016 we were still actively using
the school that was fast closing in on 100 years of age.
Now, you know, we have a brand new campus right over there in Graniteville.
It's a beautiful school and it's actually, we were designed it moderately so we can actually
add on should we need more middle school space.
Aiken High School built in 1953, one of the better campuses you find in this area
right now.
It's absolutely beautiful campus and we've just added the Performing Arts Center
as well using these funds and so again, not only did we meet the original intent
but we're only to the contingency projects
and then some bonus projects as well.
In 1952, they completed the construction
of Ridge Spring, Manila Elementary,
and Middle and High School.
And now we're able to give them an entirely new facility.
And what I like to share with folks is prior
to the penny sales tax, we were planning
on using the 8% funds piecemeal to build that school.
If we were to keep on with that original plan,
that we would not have completed Ridge Spring Elementary,
middle and high school campuses until the year 2035. So by using the penny sales
tags we had them a complete school over 12 years in advance.
Norfolk
Duster High School was built in 1968 and that school now currently houses
1,800 students and they're learning in one of our newest facilities in the
county and it's one of our most technologically state-of-the-art so
it's an absolutely beautiful campus and again all bought to you by the
Now, one of the projects that we were going to use as a contingency project was the career center.
Technically, we just were going to use whatever monies we had left over when we completed the first five projects,
and I think we were projecting around $12 million.
That really wouldn't have given us the type of facility we needed,
so we were fortunate enough to actually have some monies come in through our congressional delegation
through that mock settlement and that added another 30 million dollars that we were able to combine
with the 20 million, the 12 to 20 million that we have left over in one senate and create an
absolutely fabulous 100,000 square foot career center co-located on the campus of Aiken Technical
College. And so those students will be learning in a state-of-the-art environment that is also
co-located with the college which will ease their transition into graduate level education.
This slide here just talks a little bit about our original commitments that were made in
2014 and you can kind of see a timeline.
Now if you look closely you'll see some of those projects have been moved around a little
bit but all the projects that are named on the timeline have been completed and exceeded
and so we're at the point now where we're going beyond what we said we were going
to do with the funds and so we have more than kept the original promise that was
made in 2014 to taxpayers and we hope that would help provide you with the information
moving forward on your vote here on the 5th.
As I said before, there are still several needs in the schools that we have remaining
as you can see on the slide there.
Just showing you a bit of the antiquated areas that our students are trying to
learn in.
I'm going to get a little bit deeper into detail as we go and look at the individual
school sites.
So, what about the 2024 penny sales tax? What are we looking at? We think that our conservative
projections look like we'll be able to bring in approximately $398 million over the course
of the 10 years. Now, as I said before, we have to use only 90% of that money will go
towards building the actual schools themselves, and 10% of that $398 million will go towards
property tax relief for the taxpayers of Aiken County.
The other, the reason we're only talking about $285 million is because of that 90%, we can
only bond 90% because we don't want to bond more money than we're actually going to bring
in.
So we have a conservative estimate of $285 million that we'll actually be able to
spend towards schools should we be allowed to issue the bonds.
Very important to note that when you do a penny sales tax, one-third of the taxes that are collected are from folks that do not reside in Aiken County.
And so a penny sales tax is able to capture more money from folks that don't live here than any other form of income stream because anything else will just rely on our Aiken County taxpayers.
And so it will be 100% of the costs of our schools we pay by Aiken County taxpayers.
I remind folks that when you go to Myrtle Beach, Charleston, or Buford Counties and you
go there for vacation, you're putting money into their economy.
And guess what?
They all have a penny sales tax.
So what does that mean?
That means that when you go to a Buford for a vacation, you're taking Aiken County
tax dollars and help build Buford County schools.
So the converse of that would be we should, when folks come to our community to vacation
and spend money they should help us build our schools as well so that's what
makes the penny sales tax such an attractive option. As I said before the
penny sales tax does not have any effect on unprepared food such as
groceries gas and most medications and if we don't get a chance to renew the
penny sales tax here next week then the next chance to put it on the
ballot would be November of 2026 that meant there is a two-year gap in which
what we predict around 80 million dollars will not be collected to improve our schools
should you vote against the next adoption.
So we want to look at how the vision or we have the
vision we have of our project so when folks look at these pictures they'll say well some of these
pictures are bigger than others or some some look better than others what I would tell folks is
I only spent the team only spent a few minutes with our architects to get some
renderings together, we do not have the full scope because again we're talking
2024-2025 budget year. So when we start getting the money in from the penny
sales tax, we're going to have to sit with our architects, talk about our
specific needs, and then determine what is feasible with the monies we have
available. So we have we have like brush strokes, broad strokes of what we know
we want to do, but just like we're doing with our schools now, depending
on how much money comes in from the penny sales tax, it depends on the
actual entire scope of the projects.
We'll begin by taking a brief look
at some of the schools in the area.
I'll begin with South Facon High School.
Again, a 4A high school here in the middle of town,
but when you walk up to the school,
it is very underwhelming, it's very dated.
The roof has completely failed.
And so right now we need to replace that roof
at South Facon High School to the tune
of around 3.3, 3.4 million dollars.
So without the penny sales tax,
that's gonna have to come out of our maintenance budget,
which means we're going to have to not do other maintenance in order to take care of that roof.
Other issues that are bound at South Fakern High School include exercise spaces that are not
designed for that. So our cheerleaders are trying to practice indoors with low ceilings.
You can see down there at the bottom that's a welding lab that's also been used for storage
of several types of gas-powered equipment. It's just a very cluttered environment and not at
all what we expect for our industry standards.
Also, we have a culinary arts program there.
It's a very accomplished program at South Bacon High School,
but that culinary arts program uses residential equipment.
So our students are not being taught on commercial equipment
to be professional chefs.
They're basically learning on-house equipment.
They're getting a great education,
but it could be much better if it was
in a state-of-the-art facility.
What we envision would be a South Bacon High School
with a security vestibule entrance that gives the staff there a second chance
of looking at anybody who'd like to come in our building and they can determine
whether or not they enter the school. A redesigned front entryway that's more airy
light and it sounds like a more, it looks like a more appealing environment
for students to come in and learn. Also some competition gym spaces because
each of our schools, our older schools are built with gyms that are simply too
small for the activities that we desire to do in them and they don't
have auxiliary gyms as well, so we'd like to add competition space as well as auxiliary
space to the rest of the school.
As you walk up to Silverbluff High School, you get the same look and feel of South Akin
because it was built in the same time, and so the entryway is rather underwhelming and
uninviting, unassuming, but it's also not as safe as it could be, so we do envision
having a security vestibule of the entryway.
We also noticed that there's a lot of storage issues so we're storing things that in the
closets the classrooms were not designed for the purpose, they're not being used for the
way they were designed because our students have evolved and there are new programs in
the building since 1980 but they're having to cram them into old facilities.
You can see a shot of the athletic fields there that did not shed water even days
after a rainstorm and so sometimes we have to just play around mud or just have
some other hazards out there in our field and it's really difficult when it
comes to parking for some of the games as well. There's a shot of a very much
undersized athletic gym so we can't host very many playoff games should we make
a playoff run and then just looking at some of the older furniture and
equipment that's in the school. Our vision for Silver Bluff would be a
beautiful front entry wave that has a security vestibule open, airy, inviting
and some more purpose-built spaces
when it comes to career and technical education
and some of the other lab spaces as well as, of course,
a brand new roof for the building as well.
So we're looking at overhauling
everything that needs to be updated
as well as adding some more learning spaces at Silverbluff.
Going over to Midland Valley.
Midland Valley was the recent recipient
of some of the funds from the $90 million bond referendum,
which we were able to add around 25 new classroom spaces
to the extreme right of this photograph.
But again, it left the vast majority of the building original to the 1980s construction.
And so there are a lot of needs at Midland Valley to include the roof, to include smaller class spaces,
very tight and cramped hallways as well, and just a drab and dreary cafeteria location.
So a lot of areas that we could update at Midland Valley High School.
Also of note with Midland Valley is the extreme growth that we're starting to notice in our area.
So our community is growing. That is undeniable.
And if you look, it seems to be concentrated in Midland Valley, North Augusta area.
Now, when we were deciding which projects to pursue, we had to ask ourselves, where can we get more high school space?
North Augusta High School is completely maxed out at 1,800 students.
There is no place to put mobile classrooms in North Augusta High School,
and we're currently completely out of parking area so North Augusta highs as
big as it's going to get in order to create a brand new high school that's
going to actually serve this this amount of kids will cost about a hundred and
thirty million dollars and so our next best effort would be to say hey what's
the next closest high school and that's Midland Valley so we would like
to add some capacity to Midland Valley high school to the tune of about
400 kids to relieve some of that pressure that's going to be coming to
that side of the community. So part of this update would involve new classroom
spaces as well.
Just another shot inside many of the same problems you'll see
with the 1980s school with the residential cooking and the culinary
art spaces. Some our kids out over there in the welding lab typically have
to go outside to complete many of their projects because of the clutter and the
cafeteria space is just not designed for the amount of kids that we use in
there. This picture shows a great view of what we think we can do with Midland
Valley by adding a brand new wing to the front of the school as well as a brand
new entryway. That wing that you see on that top left-hand picture is
where we'd add the student capacity as well. Also on that same photo you can
see some of the open airiness of the the front entryway and on that side
that lower right is another wing that's going to be the culinary art
space that will redo their ROTC, culinary arts, and some of their cake spaces so they'd
have more of the state of the art classrooms that they can learn in.
The only middle school we'll talk about here today is North Augusta Middle School and North
Augusta Middle School is one of our oldest schools built in 1953 that we'll talk about
here today.
And as you can see on the front of North Augusta, there are window air conditioning
units we're using to heat and cool that space.
So that space was built originally without air conditioning, and it's just not very accessible
for those that have disabilities as well.
It's just an older building.
Now they have a new wing in North Augusta Middle School, but we need to finish that
job out.
And so we propose getting rid of some of the issues you see on this screen here.
Walls that have metal exteriors that are great conductors of heat in the summer
and great conductors of cold in the winter, which is exactly the opposite of what
you'd like. We have aging doors which cause security issues as well. There are also some
irrigation issues because much of that school was built below grade, which means water flows
downhill. Students are forced to walk through water and just inclement weather in order to
go to the library. And also you see the lack of air conditioning. That's a boys bathroom
that is ventilated with a window instead of a vent itself. So we need to update
a lot of that space. And the plan to update North Augusta Middle School is on the screen
here. And it's very comprehensive in that we want to take the back of the school and
make it the front and the front of the school and it'll go to the back. So we'll construct
a new wing downward to practice field is right now at North Augusta Middle School.
And then on the back side, which is now the current front, we'll demolish that and
that'll be their new playing field. And then they'll have an entirely new facility
that is accessible to all, as well as a bright and friendly environment for our students to learn in.
Lastly, we know that we're going to need elementary space because I mentioned earlier that we're growing in Area 2
and Area 3, Midland Valley, North Augusta area. We've just completed the New Holland Springs Middle School,
so we know that middle school seats are, we have some middle school capacity.
Our issue is going to be at the elementary and at the high school level.
So we propose to build a new Area 3 elementary school at an area to be named.
So we're looking at some spaces.
We've purchased some land, but there's still several opportunities to put that school
at a space that will maximize the efficiency for our students.
We're going to also use the same design language that we use in Highland Springs.
And you'll notice that this picture looks very much like Highland Springs,
whereas Highland Springs is a middle school that's ready to add an elementary to it.
This new school will be an elementary school that's ready to add a middle school to it.
So we'll have that flexibility and that will make Aiken County Schools future compatible.
We're prepared to answer the call of the growth that's going to be coming to our area in short order.
A little bit of design language on the inside.
Again, that's from Highland Springs, but it's very cost-effective for the district to utilize previous plans when we are going forward with completely new construction.
So we think we're going to get a lot of bang for our buck with this one.
Now lastly, as I mentioned with the 2014 penny sales tax,
there's an opportunity if there's monies left over after you've completed the five primary projects,
we can complete contingency projects.
And these are the projects that we'll get to in no specific order on the screen
when we have monies left over and once we've substantially completed the other projects.
And so the first one you'll see on that screen is a roof.
It's basically a ceiling inside a school showing some leaks.
We have several schools in our district that have the need for roofing projects.
Their roofs are failing.
Roofs are becoming about a million dollars a pop for smaller schools and larger schools,
Silver Bluff and South Aiken.
You're talking multiple millions of dollars.
So if we had money left over, we'd like to put new roofs on all the facilities that
have failing roofs.
The second picture here is a secure vestibule that I've mentioned on all of our new
schools or any school that we're going to redesign.
Well, again, we have over 40 schools, so there are several schools that do not have security
vestibules.
And we'd like to add those using the penny sales tax with any leftover dollars.
At the lower left-hand corner, you can see Burrard Elementary.
Burrard was designed marginally as well.
It's prepared to add on some classrooms on each end of each wing.
And so it actually would not be that expensive to add on those classes.
So we'd like to, if we see that we need more elementary capacity in that area,
which that area is experiencing a lot of growth, we can quickly add on at least six classrooms
to bird elementary. At the middle there, you can see Gloverville. Gloverville is an interesting
story, whereas it was not designed to have the 300 plus students that they have today.
And so Gloverville actually has about 12 active mobile classrooms. That means that
any given day you're going to see more kids outside in mobiles in Gloverville elementary
Then you'll find inside so they end up coming in for dinner. I mean for lunch and breakfast and other activities
But then I go back outside to their mobile classrooms
And so that's definitely less than ideal especially in inclement weather
We would definitely we would like to find a project that we could do to help get those kids indoors
Should we have the contingency funds that would support that and lastly you see down there Greendale elementary you can see there
We have the large buckets just collecting rainwater again another roofing issue
But there's some other issues inside Greendale as well as the exterior as well as their
Wastewater. Greendale's at the bottom of a hill and it doesn't have any drainage.
And so when it rains, sometimes the folks in Greendale are driving through what
appears to be a small lake in order to drop them off at school. So we've got to
do an entire overhaul of that campus, but we don't have the money internally
right now to do so. Should we complete all the first primary projects, we'd
have a chance to take a good hard look at Greendale and see what we can do for
those very deserving kids and faculty in that area.
So I've talked a lot
about the referendum but let's take a look at how it will look.
Now I've taken a preview of my sample ballot and I've noticed that this ballot question,
the actual ballot question of would you like to vote for the penny sales tax is the second
question on my sample ballot.
So just keep in mind you're going to see two questions from Aiken County Schools.
The first question, well one question, which may be first or the second, is going to
say, would you allow us to renew the penny sales tax?
Again, the penny sales tax has been collected
since 2014 or March of 2015.
And so nothing will change should you vote yes.
You will not see an increase.
It would just be a continuation of the penny sales tax.
So the first question or one question
will say, would you allow us to continue the penny sales
tax to do the following projects, which I've just outlined?
Now, there's another companion question.
And that question will say, if and only if the penny sales tax is approved, will you allow Aiken County to issue bonds?
What's the purpose of issuing bonds?
Well, if the answer is yes, when you check the Aiken County issue bonds, that will give us the opportunity to sell bonds and jumpstart the projects.
We'll be able to begin as early as March of next year selling the bonds and bringing
in $290 million and we're able to start the products almost simultaneously.
If the answer is no, and Aiken County cannot issue bonds from the penny sales tax, then
we'd have to wait for the penny to accumulate over time to begin the first project.
Then accumulate even more to begin the second project.
As I mentioned earlier, building costs are on the rise.
Now, that trend could change, but it would behoove us a lot to go ahead and get the
project started now as quickly as possible, because first of all, these schools are old,
the students have been waiting, and we don't anticipate costs going down.
So we really would like to be able to issue those bonds as well, should you think this
is an acceptable answer.
So the companion question may appear first.
It may say, if you say yes to the penny sales tax, would you like to issue bonds
first?
And yes means yes, you want us to jumpstart projects, no means no, you don't want us to.
And then the next question may come up, would you allow Aiken County to continue the penny sales tax?
We've began an education campaign, and so you're going to see on your several social media sites
some of these images of one-cent sales tax and giving you some facts
and some data that can help you make your decision.
Again, I'm not here to tell you vote yes, vote no.
I'm here to show you what we've done with the last penny sales tax and what we propose to do with the next and you have
to take this information in and determine whether or not you think that we're worthy stewards of the money.
We've done exactly what we said we were going to do and that we can be trusted to do it again.
Everything I've shared with you today is also on our website.
So I invite you to come to the Aiden County School District website, click on follow your penny,
and you can see every piece of data I've shown you here today.
You can go through it for yourself and make your determination.
Go there early and often, even after the vote happens, we're going to be updating the site
because our projects are ongoing.
Many people think that once the new sales tax is adopted, the old projects stop.
But no, we're going to continue to collect through February of 2025, and that meant
those projects are ongoing or may even still be started, and the money doesn't
just go away in 25.
so whatever money is there will be spent on the original projects from 2014 so
these projects will hopefully overlap and that's what we're hoping to do so
again thank you for your time I appreciate your attention and if you
missed anything first replay this but if you don't get your answer by replaying
this video then feel free to reach out to any member of my staff or myself and
I'd love to spend some time telling you what we've done thank you and
good evening