MOORPARK : School Board OKs Work on Stadium

After voicing concerns over the ability of a community group to raise enough money to repay the district, the Moorpark school board has narrowly agreed to spend $170,000 to install a concrete bleacher foundation for the planned Moorpark High School athletic stadium.

The expenditure represents the first use of a $525,000 loan that the district agreed to extend to the Moorpark Athletic Community Complex committee last summer to fund construction of the stadium.

Board members Clint Harper and Pam Castro were the dissenters in a 3-2 vote Tuesday to go ahead with the work. Both said they fear the cash-strapped district could get itself into even more financial trouble if the committee cannot raise enough money to repay the five-year loan that the district has taken out on the group’s behalf.

“I don’t think we’re being cautious enough financially,” Harper said after the meeting. “My concern and Pam Castro’s concern is that the board is not taking seriously enough our budget projections and the warnings that we’re getting from the county superintendent of schools office.”

After ending the last fiscal year with a reserve of roughly $3 million, the district now expects to spend $1.8 million of that this fiscal year and will wind up with a $1.2 million reserve in June.

The situation prompted the county superintendent’s office to send letters to the district in July and August urging fiscal prudence in light of the revenue shortage.

In the Aug. 31 letter, Moorpark officials were warned that if they continued the current spending pattern into the 1993-94 fiscal year without finding additional sources of revenue, “the district will spend itself into insolvency.”

Because of that--and ongoing teacher salary negotiations that could end up costing the district an additional $1 million annually--Harper had suggested letting the athletics group spend money on the stadium as they raised it, instead of having the district front the costs through the loan.

But school board President Tom Baldwin said the stadium project offered enough of a potential community benefit to justify going ahead.

“It may not have been the most fiscally prudent thing to do, but given the circumstances it was the right thing to do,” Baldwin said. “Obviously, the more conservative thing would be to go on a pay-as-you-go basis and not incur any debt for the stadium. However, other districts that have done that in the past have spent 10 or 15 years putting a stadium together.”

Supt. Tom Duffy had advocated approving the concrete foundation project.

“I wouldn’t make a recommendation to the board if I didn’t think we could meet our obligations,” Duffy said recently. “If somebody else is saying, ‘We’re going to help you,’ and it’s a good community group, what are you going to say?”