Platte County R-3 targeting 2021 for next bond issue

Back at the Between the Lines grind while wondering what borderline insane proposal the Platte County Commission will come up with next.

The best sleeping occurs on nights when you don’t have to run either the furnace or the air conditioner, would you agree? In other words, we’ve had some decent sleeping weather lately. My eyes are getting heavy just thinking about it.

Back to the Platte County Commission for just a moment. After I jokingly commented that I’m kind of missing writing about a nutty $65 million jail tax idea every week, I received this advice from a friend: “Just sit tight. They’ll pull another crazy-ass stunt if you lighten up.”

You may have heard the NFL draft is later this week. Oh wow, someone hold me till the storm passes.

I love NFL football but I don’t get the in-depth fascination so many diehards have with the draft. Yawn.

I’d rather watch grass grow. Or soccer. Sorry, sometimes I get those two confused.

After meeting for a little more than two years, a long range facility planning committee for the Platte County R-3 School District has come up with a final recommendation it will present to the R-3 board of education soon. The planning committee included some R-3 staff members and some members of the community, though it is clear some community participants stopped going to the meetings. Speculation is a good number of the community participants casually dropped out of the process after coming to the conclusion the plans are drafted by the school’s administration and the “committee” is simply a smokescreen to steer the board under the mask it was community input that drove the plan.

Anyway, here is what we know at this point. The long range plan is for a bond issue for facility improvements to be placed in front of R-3 voters in the spring of 2021, so roughly two years from now. School officials are emphasizing that 2021 is a potentially moving target, and that target can be adjusted at any point based on an annual review of conditions that include relevant growth, financial and facility data.

A letter from Jay Harris, executive director of operations for the Platte County R-3 School District, says that the committee will recommend these items to be included in the district’s next bond issue:

• A new 600-student middle school located on the district’s 80-acre property at Hwy. 152 and Platte Purchase Road (with the potential for this building to be expanded to an 800-student building in future years).
• The conversion of Pathfinder Elementary and Barry School to kindergarten-fifth grade elementary schools.
• The next phase of Platte County High School’s master plan renovations. Details of areas to be renovated will be determined after a design review process with architect/engineering team.
• Districtwide upgrades with the primary focus on safety/security improvements and technology enhancements.

The 2021 projected timeline “is contingent upon our growth projections and financial analysis remaining consistent with our current information, and is intended to be a no tax levy increase bond issue,” Harris writes in his letter.

Harris notes that district leadership along with Long-Range Facility Plan Task Force members will conduct an annual review of conditions to determine if any adjustments to this plan are warranted. The indication is the annual review process will consist of two meetings, one in November and one in March, to review relevant information.

Thank you to those who continue to tune in for our Landmark Live escapades. For the uninitiated, Landmark Live is a videocast my buddy Brad Carl and I do via our Facebook page. And if you haven’t yet hit “like” on The Landmark’s Facebook page, you need to go do that right now. Find us by searching Platte County Landmark on Facebook.

We’re tickled pink that Landmark Live, which was launched in September of 2017, continues to attract viewers. Recently in reviewing the analytics provided to us by Facebook, we’ve noticed a subtle change in the demographics of our viewers. For the first 15 months of Landmark Live, our viewership was dominated by the female gender, with numbers most often around 65% female, 35% male.The female audience rarely went lower than 60%. Who knows exactly why. Could be the topics. Brad and I like to think it’s because of the sex appeal of the hosts.

But recently female-male numbers have started to change a bit. We’ve done seven episodes thus far in 2019 and have noticed a growing number of men are starting to tune in. Hi guys, welcome to the party, where you been, you’re late. What gives? Could be the topics. We’ve been heavy on jail talk lately. In this case it’s not the sex appeal of the hosts.

Here in chronological order is a list of the seven Landmark Live episodes in 2019, the number of viewers and the gender breakdown of the audience:

1. The Todd Graves Episode: 5,001 viewers, 54% women, 46% men.
2. The Patty Farr RE/MAX Episode: 5,395 viewers, 53% women, 47% men.
3. The No More Blurred Lines Episode, guest Kirby Holden: 5,084 viewers, 53% women, 47% men.
4. The Current Events Episode with guest David Park: 3,316 viewers, 53% men, 47% women. The first time ever a Landmark Live show garnered more men viewers than women.
5. The Jailhouse Rock Episode, with Kirby Holden returning as a guest: 3,826 viewers, 53% women, 47% men.
6. The Two Guys Riffing Episode: 3,028 viewers, 53% women, 47% men.
7. The Jail Tax Autopsy Episode, guest David Park: 4,084 viewers, 52% men, 48% women. Only the second time in Landmark Live history there were more male than female viewers.

(Snooze your way through the NFL Draft with Foley via Twitter @ivanfoley or find him napping on Facebook at Platte County Landmark. Also catch him on Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube. Email ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)