Cost Of Hinsdale D86's New Pools? Unknown

HINSDALE, IL – If you are wondering what the pools at Hinsdale Central and South high schools ended up costing, you're going to have to keep wondering.

Hinsdale High School District lacks the final numbers. Central's pool was finished two years ago, while South's was completed last year.

Patch filed a public records request for the final costs of the pools. But the district provided estimates from January 2019, before the projects started. They were $17 million for Central and $7.3 million for South, for a total of $24.3 million.

Asked about the final costs, the district's spokesman, Chris Jasculca, said he spoke with the chief financial officer, Josh Stephenson.

"He said there is no additional information beyond what was provided through the (Freedom of Information Act) requests," Jasculca said in an email. "He also shared that all of the bid packages were structured by trade, school, and phase. They were never subdivided by project or space."

In April 2019, District 86 voters approved a referendum to go into debt by $140 million for school projects, including new pools for both campuses.

Under the plan, voters were told the pools would each be six lanes and 25 yards long.

In September 2019, however, the board decided to increase Central's pool to 10 lanes and 40 yards long and South's pool to 40 yards while staying at six lanes.

Patch's public records request to District 86 produced no estimate on the increased pool size for South from 2019. But the revised estimate for Central's was $23.8 million, nearly $7 million more than the original plan.

In a statement after the September 2019 meeting, the school board acknowledged its decisions were a departure from what officials said they planned before the referendum.

The board said industry experts and residents advised it was best to build pools that were aligned with student populations and equipped to meet students' needs. Central's enrollment is twice South's.

In the statement, the board said the pools would not impact the other planned projects. It promised not to exceed the total of $140 million.

Last November, the district released a budget summary that showed that the referendum budget reached $166 million – nearly 20 percent over the referendum amount.

Of the $26 million in overages, $16 million came from "bond premium funding," according to the district. That means District 86 received an additional $16 million in proceeds over the face value of the bonds issued. The rest of the money has come from a variety of sources.

A donation of $1.6 million went toward the Central pool.

Burr Ridge resident Alan Hruby, a citizen watchdog, said voters learned their lesson after the district didn't stick to its plan for six-lane, 25-yard pools.

"I find it disturbing that while District 86 was threatening school families with cuts to co-curriculars if they didn’t support the April 2019 referendum, it made no mention of a foreseeable bond premium windfall that could have been used to defray the amount they were asking of taxpayers," Hruby said in an email to Patch. "After the referendum passed, District 86 considered and subsequently rejected the option of using bond premium to relieve the referendum tax burden."

"Instead of sticking to the $139.8 million spending plan it presented to voters, District 86 aggregated $16 million of bond premium with $10.6 million of 'alternative financing' to fund pool expansions and additional projects that they didn’t need voter approval to implement," Hruby said.

Hruby said he opposed the referendum because the underlying facilities plan failed to balance enrollments between Center and South, leaving South underutilized

According to the district, Central's pool is already having problems. Patch wrote about the issues last month. In response, readers asked how much the pool ended up costing, prompting the public records request.