B.E.S.T. Plan Provides up to $1 Billion for School Construction
(DENVER) State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff, Senate President-elect Peter Groff, and State Senator Gail Schwartz announced an ambitious plan today to provide up to one billion dollars towards fixing and replacing K-12 schools across Colorado.
The Building Excellent Schools Today – or B.E.S.T. – Plan creates a statewide solution for Colorado’s crumbling schools. The BEST Plan will leverage income from the School Trust Lands, property the federal government granted to Colorado for the benefit of its schoolchildren upon statehood. The School Trust Lands are dedicated to the support of K-12 public education.
The proposal was borne out of a summer-long tour of decaying schools by state legislators including Romanoff and State Senator Sue Windels. Kennedy helped legislators craft the BEST Plan, a fiscally responsible method to fund these long-needed repairs.
“Every child deserves a safe, healthy place to go to school,” said Romanoff. He said that the inequalities he saw while touring were striking. “It’s tough to learn when the roof is caving in or your desk is falling through the floor. The quality of your education shouldn’t depend on your zip code. We can do better.”
The BEST plan will leverage $30-40 million of revenue annually from the School Trust Lands to raise up to $500 million in capital. Local matching could raise another $400-500 million, bringing the total to nearly one billion dollars, enough to build scores of new schools or to repair hundreds of existing ones.
Kennedy noted that income from the School Trust Lands has grown dramatically in recent years. “We’ve seen a huge upswing in mineral lease revenues, royalties, rents and interest over the past few years.” Revenues have leapt from almost $57 million annually in 2004 to an anticipated $90 million in 2008.
“We want to harness some of that growth,” Kennedy said. “This asset belongs to Colorado’s school kids. It can, and must, be used to make a difference in the quality and safety of their education today and for years to come.”
Groff said that the BEST plan, which would not raise taxes or impact the state’s General Fund, would be a legislative priority. “We’re putting kids at a disadvantage from the moment they walk into some of these buildings,” he said. “We’re talking about moving Colorado’s schools out of the nineteenth century and into the twenty-first.”
-- Posted by Staff
"Our agenda is ambitious: to build the best public schools in America, to become the renewable energy capital of the world, and to bring health care to all Coloradans. That's what the Colorado Promise is all about." —House Speaker Andrew Romanoff
Representative Jim Riesberg will receive the 2007 Legislator of the Year award from The Colorado BioScience Association. He is receiving his award for the work he has done with bioscience industry legislation over the last two years. Among his work, Rep. Riesberg helped enact two bills, HR 1360 and HB 1060, providing "$4.5 million in state funds for proof-of-concept grants and SBIR matching grants to companies commercializing state institution technologies." To see other Colorado BioScience Association award winners, visit the Northern Colorado Business Report website for the full article at http://www.ncbr.com/article.asp?id=90181.
Rep. John Kefalas
