Commissioner sees new school bond issue

RALEIGH -- Wake County residents should vote this year on a public school bond issue of up to $1 billion, county Commissioner Joe Bryan said today.

Bryan, a Republican former mayor of Knightdale, said last year's record $970 million bond issue covered only about half of Wake's $1.9 billion in pressing school-construction needs. The school system expects about 8,000 more students next year, and more the year after.

"That additional billion-dollar need is still there," Bryan said, during the taping of Headline Saturday, a TV news program that is a collaboration of The News & Observer and WRAL-TV. The program airs at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

"We need another $3 billion over the next seven years, Bryan said. "We need to get out ahead. Until we solve this core infrastructure, having the capacity, we're not going to be able to focus on what's going on in the classrooms."

Bryan said controversy over school schedules and assignments could delay the next bond issue two or three years, but he hopes not.

"We need to make that core infrastructure investment today," he says.

The size of the bond issue, Bryan says, "probably would be somewhere in the 500-million to a billion-dollar range."

Commissioners have discussed the possibility of a bond issue this year but are far from settled on an exact figure. They have said it is up to the Wake school board to request a bond issue.

Some school board members have expressed concern about whether voters would approve another bond issue so soon after doing so last year.

Bryan appeared on the show with Beverley Clark, a school board member. Clark is calling for countywide growth restrictions and new ways to pay for schools, such as "impact fees" on new development and "transfer taxes" on home sales.

"Citizens are looking for there to be additional sources of revenue for funding schools, as well as another bond [issue]," Clark says. "It is important for us as elected officials, especially on our board, to be working toward having additional sources of revenue."

Staff writer T. Keung Hui contributed to this story.