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REBECCA CATALANELLO and BRIDGET HALL GRUMETSchool district and county officials prepare to undertake school, road and other projects.
PORT RICHEY - Fox Hollow Elementary principal Arlene Moreno finally could let herself imagine:
What would it be like to lead a campus that fits all of its students without squeezing classrooms into closets, holding lunch in six shifts or using parking lots for playgrounds?
"I know there's not going to be an overnight change," said Moreno, who heads a 1,035-student school built for 537. "But to know that there is help down the road, it feels like I can breathe a little easier."
Only a day after Pasco voters approved a 1-cent sales tax increase for schools and roads, officials already were talking about the next steps.
A new school that would relieve crowding at Fox Hollow and three other campuses was on the top of Mike Rapp's to-do list.
"The future holds an almost constant pace of new school construction," said Rapp, the district's director of planning. "There will be no time to breathe."
Six schools already are on the drawing board and kicking to go, he said. Two elementaries should be under construction this summer and opened by the fall 2005. Then look for four more buildings - one high school, two middle schools and one elementary - to open their doors in the fall of 2006.
By the time the 10-year, $437-million sales tax expires, the 57,000-student school district hopes it will have built 20 new schools and completed renovations or major maintenance in most others.
An exhausted Ray Gadd, who spearheaded the district's push to get voter support for the tax, said Wednesday his next move was, well, to clear off his desk.
After that, he said, he'd be following up on a verbal promise to voters to form an independent oversight committee to help ensure the new tax funds are spent appropriately in the district.
"I think a lot of people have put their credibility and integrity on the line for this," Gadd said. "I'm not going to take that lightly. That kind of oversight will be here or I can't work here."
Not much has been decided about who would be on the committee yet.
It might have about eight members, likely people with an understanding of finances and construction, Gadd suggested. But both Gadd and School Board member Marge Whaley said they wanted to steer clear of conflicts of interest.
"Nobody on the committee will be a school person or married to a school person," said Whaley, who represents central Pasco. Whaley even hinted that people such as tax critics Ann and Bill Bunting might be good candidates for such a position.
While school officials had construction plans pretty much hot-to-go on Wednesday, county government leaders weren't yet sure what road projects they would be tackling first.
County Administrator John Gallagher said he would start lining up engineering firms within the next 30 days or so to design the intersection improvements so that road work could begin next year.
Under the terms of the tax, the county and school district will each get 45 percent of the new tax revenues, with the municipalities sharing the rest.
"It takes quite a while to negotiate these (contractor) contracts, and we want to get them negotiated so they can go to work" once the county starts collecting the extra sales tax in January, Gallagher said.
The county will start purchasing new sheriff's cruisers and patrol laptops within fiscal 2005. And construction for two new fire stations along State Road 52 won't start until 2012.
Gallagher joked that Jennifer Seney, head of the pro-Penny Preserve Pasco! group, was probably already out Wednesday staking land that the county should purchase under the environmental preservation arm of Penny for Pasco.
Seney laughed. She said she expected it would be eight to 18 months before the county could successfully nominate an area of land for purchase and conservation:
"I wish it would be tomorrow," she said.
Gallagher said the county's Environmental Lands Acquisition Task Force will very soon start meeting to evaluate possible sites for purchase.
The county-created task force issued a report last year recommending the county partner with other agencies, such as the Southwest Florida Water Management District, to buy properties that would connect existing conservation tracts. But the sales will hinge on which property owners agree to sell for a reasonable price.
Unlike the school district, the County Commission does not have plans to create an oversight committee. Seney said voters should look for accountability anyway.
"The commissioners are going to have to keep their noses clean on this one," she said. "And I've seen nothing but willingness to do that."