$300 Million Could Build 75 Grade Schools But Borrowing For Other Projects Possible Since Bonds Exempt From State Debt Limit

There are lots of other things $300 million in state bonds could buy.

It could build two major prisons like Airway Heights, capable of housing 1,937 inmates.

A typical elementary school costs about $4 million. Taxpayers could build 75 of them for the cost of the sports facility and exhibition hall.

Construction money for a health sciences building proposed for the Riverpoint Higher Education Park was withheld by state lawmakers in the capital budget this year, partly on the grounds that there wasn’t enough money to pay for it.

The building’s price tag: $30 million. Taxpayers could build 10 of them for the cost of the football proposal.

The proposed expansion of the Cheney Cowles Museum would cost $19 million. The art museum addition could be paid for more than 15 times over for the price of what taxpayers are being asked to invest in pro sports.

It costs about $10 million to buy the land and develop a state park with 100 campsites. State residents could have 30 new parks for the price of the football and soccer proposal.

Taxpayers could buy 2,000 units of affordable housing, or three major symphony halls.

Community centers go for about $10 million. Taxpayers could smother the state with them for the price of the Seahawk proposal. Or they could buy a trio of $90 million chemistry buildings, like the new one at the University of Washington, for other higher education campuses.

Taxpayers could salt the state with youth athletic fields, which cost about $1 million each.

Or they could spring for three major convention centers, which typically go for about $100 million.

For $300 million in state debt, taxpayers could build 60, 64-bed juvenile detention facilities like Martin Hall.

Spokane residents could have 30 Pacific Science Centers like the one proposed for Riverfront Park.

They could fund the entire 10-year capital plan for state wildlife and recreation lands, used for habitat protection, parkland acquisition and wildlife conservation.

Lawmakers were careful to exempt the stadium bonds from the state debt limit, so the project would not eat into the state’s capacity to borrow money for other projects in that respect.

But the proposal is expected to place at least some burden on the state general fund because of the cost of paying off the bonds.

How much is hard to say. Backers of the stadium say the cost of tax credits used to pay off the bonds is covered by economic activity generated by keeping the Seahawks in town.

Without a new stadium, the team has threatened to leave.

But backers are relying on estimates that could prove high or low. And they do not take into account the comparative economic benefit of investing the same amount of state money in something else with a higher rate of return for taxpayers.

“The economic benefits of stadium proposals are greatly exaggerated,” said Dennis Zimmerman, an expert on public finance at the Congressional Research Service.

“If you invest money and get a 4 percent rate of return, and you could get 6, you did not make 4 percent. You lost 2.”

, DataTimes