Re:  The infamous Colorado City School District

 

Shortly before the end of our session in June, I received an e-mail from a woman in Lake Havasu City telling me that I should be ashamed of myself for having helped "those people" in Colorado City and that the school should have been closed and the students bussed to Fredonia so they could be exposed to the outside world.  Here's the response I sent to her:

 

Last year the legislature authorized the Superintendent of Public Instruction to put a receiver in place for the Colorado City School District, which he did.  Mr. Peter Davis, who is a CPA, MBA and certified fraud investigator, has been on the job since December.  He has made remarkable progress in turning the district around, including cutting the bloated staff, selling the airplane, and generally getting the books in order.  All members of the prior board have been replaced, and as part of the receivership Mr. Davis has veto power over anything the board does.  Because of the new composition, he has not had to exercise that power.  The original bill was a loan to the district of $1.2 million, which would have allowed them to pay off the Risk Retention Trust which (among other things) paid the teachers last year when the school district said it didn't have the money to do that.  When the bill reached the Senate, that provision was changed to a loan of $318,000, which is the amount of the next three bond payments that are due.  The reason for the lack of cash is that the United Effort Plan, which owns much of the property in Colorado City, is itself under a fiduciary until new Trustees are installed.  Some of those living in the homes are refusing to pay the property taxes that are past due, so the County cannot give the district the funds it would otherwise be able to raise.  The fiduciary is in the process of evicting those who have not paid their taxes and the situation should resolve itself as new people move into the community and start paying the taxes.  Once new trustees of the Plan are in place, other changes will be made in the distribution of property and overall management of the considerable monies involved in the Plan.  The above is just a very brief overview of the very complicated situation that has developed over the years in Colorado City.  Actions are being taken, both financially and legally, to correct some of the obvious wrongs that have taken place there.  The students who are currently enrolled in the school are not members of the Fundamentalist sect that is so controversial.  Those children were removed from the school some time ago, so they would not receive any benefit of being bussed to Fredonia.

 

HB 2817 also contains other provisions, such as waiving the requirement that in order to sell a vacant building the receiver would have to put it to a vote of the residents.  All in all, this bill just gives the receiver some flexibility to carry out the tasks he has been assigned, and I am proud to have been able to help in this effort.

 

Here are two updates to that response:

 

When the original bill came before the House, it passed 60-0.  This is itself unusual, in that there are rarely all sixty members on the floor at any time.  When the amended bill came to the Senate, it was set to pass 29-1 until our Senator from District 3 rose to speak against it, and two Senators changed their votes resulting in a 27-3 passage.

 

Because of the Utah fiduciary's eviction notices, the residents paid their property taxes and the school portion was forwarded to the district.  They did not have to access the loan that was authorized by the legislature via the bill that I sponsored, so no state monies were expended to "bail out" the district.

 

I remain proud of my efforts to support one of the rural communities in the vast area that is District 3.  Little attention has been paid to the area known as the "Arizona Strip" by previous representatives, and I have made a conscious decision to remedy that.