The three new schools under construction in western Weber County, funded by a voter-approved bond in 2021, are on schedule to open in time for the 2024 school year. The schools will just have a much higher price tag, which will likely mean a higher tax bill for residents in the future.

West Field High School in Taylor, Mountain View Junior High in West Haven and the unnamed elementary school in West Haven are more than $43 million over budget combined, according to Weber School District officials.

West Field, which is being built to alleviate overcrowding at Fremont, Roy and Weber high schools, is $16.3 million over budget, Mountain View is $15 million over budget and the new elementary school is $12 million over.

Those three projects, initially approved in the 2021 bond for a total of $242 million, are now expected to cost around $285.3 million. The total cost of the 2021 bond was approved at $279 million.

That’s left the district without sufficient money to fund the fourth construction project on the bond, a rebuild of the 66-year-old Roosevelt Elementary in Washington Terrace.

The Roosevelt rebuild has also gone up, from $37 million to approximately $51.7 million. The total cost of the four bond projects now is approximately $338 million, or $59 million more than the bond the voters approved.

Inflation on construction costs — steel, cement, lumber, labor, etc. — is the primary cost-hiker for the projects, according to WSD Business Administrator Robert Petersen.

“Our total costs have gone up about 21% from what we originally estimated,” Petersen told the Standard-Examiner.

He said other school districts in the state have experienced similar inflationary costs on their projects.

“It was startling until we started comparing it with other school districts and things like that, and their projects. We all of a sudden went from being startled and dismayed to, ‘Oh, OK. … We could’ve been worse,'” Petersen added.

Water drainage issues at the West Field site in particular racked up a price tag of more than $1 million. At the new elementary site, crews found a spring underneath the site that didn’t show up in pre-site testing, and the spring had to be dealt with, too.

Petersen said the district has some other sources of income, such as a “bond premium,” that will reduce the $59 million budget shortfall to around $51.7 million.

But to deal with the shortfall, the WSD board will go through the public truth-in-taxation process on Aug. 2 in hopes of raising taxes to bring in more money to both complete the Roosevelt Elementary rebuild and fund operating costs — non-teacher staff — at the three new schools.

To do this, Petersen says the WSD board wants to increase the capital levy, which is a fund that can be used on capital projects such as school repair and maintenance, that would then fund the issuance of revenue bonds to pay for the Roosevelt rebuild.

In an offsetting move, the board intends to decrease the debt service levy — how the district pays off its loans and bonds — because as the assessed value of Weber County has increased, the district has brought in more money than anticipated from the debt service levy.

Unrelated to the bond shortfall, WSD is also seeking a 9.8% overall increase in tax revenue, which would bolster overall annual property tax collections from $109.86 million to $120.59 million.

The proposed increases will bump the yearly tax bill on a residential property in Weber County by $136.14 and on an average-value commercial property by $247.52, according to the Weber County Clerk/Auditor’s Office.

But Petersen said the county’s figures are incomplete because they don’t include the decrease in the debt service levy, which Petersen says will result in only about an $85 yearly hike on a residential property, and not the $136.14 listed.

The three new schools in western Weber County are being built to alleviate overcrowding at schools and deal with more expected population growth on the west side of Interstate 15. Boundary studies are under way for the three schools, so the district doesn’t know exactly how many students each new school will open with in 2024.

The district, however, doesn’t expect each school to open with its full capacity of students in the building that first year. As a result, district spokesperson Lane Findlay said it’s possible the school buildings themselves might not be 100% finished by August 2024.

The Roosevelt rebuild project was originally scheduled to begin in 2025. The district is on edge about inflation continuing, so it’s putting the Roosevelt project out to bid this October with the hope of starting the rebuild in January 2024 instead. It’s intended to be an on-site rebuild, meaning it would happen while the school’s open.

Roosevelt Elementary opened in 1957 and other than a classroom addition around 1970, it hasn’t had any major facelifts, according to Findlay.

The school doesn’t have air conditioning and some classrooms have just one electrical outlet. There are four portable classrooms at Roosevelt, which reported an enrollment of 481 students to the state on Oct. 1 for last school year.