Schools are inherently bad in cost accounting and cost recovery. The way most districts work now is they have a set of buildings and grounds. Because of the way schools are ran, and the fact that the money grubbing unions have managed to get these fucking awesome retirement packages and health care packages for their employees, virtually ever dollar they get in the form of taxes goes to labor costs, with very little left over for anything novel like maintenance reserves or even basic maintenance.Left Seater wrote:Well, school facilities are a huge cost and don't bring in much in the way of cash. Maybe more schools should open up their facilities to the residents for a fee. Our local school allows joqqers to use the track at the HS, the tennis courts at the JR High, the swim center at the HS for a fee for lap swimming, etc. Why not rent out school rooms or the cafeteria or theater for non school groups. Make them pay what the security and clean up fees would be plus an additional amount. Most school rooms are empty for more than 16 hours a day. Piss poor use of an asset.Goober McTuber wrote:Joe in PB wrote:We all pay taxes, and schools can easily provide the space needed without any strings or perceived biases attached.
Out here school grounds are closed after hours, so basketball courts, etc are not available. That is a mistake imo.
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Based on your logic, any church group should be able to use our schools. We already can't afford to properly support and maintain our schools. We don't to need to come up with extra money to clean up after BSA, your transgender scout group, the Young Muslims, etc. Private groups/organizations can go find their own place to congregate.
They let the buildings go to shit and then when the fucking things are falling down and the roofs are leaking they say, " Oh its a danger to our kids..we need to pass this bazillion dollar bond package so we can fix the buildings and build new ones. " Any monies that would be charged for usage fees may go to a maintenance fund account of some kind, but guarranfuckingteed it will never, never, have an impact on the bottom line or impact the facilities one bit. Back when we had the sports turf business, we could install a synthetic turf field for right around 1.6 million dollars. The turf manufactuers always told them, you need to set up a sinking fund because you will need to replace the carpet in 8 to 10 years to the tune of about 500K each field. So what do they do...yeah they ignore that and when the fields go to shit then they have no money to replace them.
Keeping people off the fields and out of the facilities can make the asset last longer with less maintenance and preserve your facility for its actual intended use. Most of the time, the rental rates they charge barely pay energy costs let alone any kind of cost offset for use.
