This Utah school district is projected to be debt-free by 2031

ST. GEORGE — In 2017, Washington County School District business administrator Brent Bills woke up with an idea that he hoped would help relieve taxpayers, while also paying off millions of dollars in debt.

That idea has turned into a reality, with the district projected to be debt-free by 2031. This would make it one of only a hand full of districts, including San Juan, North Summit, South Summit and Wayne, to be free of any bond debt.

The Washington County School District also plans to pay cash for any new builds going forward without raising taxes through added bonds. This debt-free model also comes amid a decline in student enrollment.

"It's one of those things that caused me to wake up in the middle of the night and go, 'You know, I wonder if we could do that?'" Bills told KSL. "I went to the board and said, 'I think we can do this.'"

The plan Bills outlined to the school board was to leverage a unique circumstance that the area was experiencing that included rapid business growth and a decline in student enrollment. Doing this meant the district would capitalize on property taxes being collected through new growth at a time when there wasn't a need for new schools to be built.

The lower enrollment, he said, has had many factors including fewer families with younger children moving in, and a larger number of students taking online classes in the upper grades. The Utah Fits All scholarship was also noted as a factor in lower student enrollment. The total amount of student loss for the 2026-2027 school year hovers right around 500 across all grade levels.

Bills went to the board with his idea in 2018, which was the last year the district conducted a bond election, which the district promised taxpayers would be the last. And over the next several years, the new growth property taxes that were collected allowed for debt to be paid down substantially.

"We were able to create a cliff where all a sudden our debt payments dropped in 2022. And so that was kind of the target," Bills said. "Then there were two further drops that were going to come on later on as we got rid of all of our debt."

The district then decided to get rid of its debt service levy, eliminating long-term loans paid with interest, and shifted completely to a capital levy system. Doing this made it so the district wouldn't rely on any new debt or raise taxes but would use funds from new growth to pay off debt and conduct school improvements and short-term projects.

Paying off debt would also allow the district to then use future tax revenue to pay cash for any future schools that would need to be built.

"Overall, it was a net decrease to the average taxpayer of $5 a year to make the switch from the debt service levy to the capital levy," he said. "And now we're just paying cash for everything we build. At the peak, we were paying over $10 million a year in interest on our debt."

Bills noted that the reason the district will have to wait until being completely debt-free earlier than 2031 is due to some bonds totaling about $5 million that can't be paid off until 2031.

"It has actually been a real blessing that we started this when we did because with building construction costs going up, if you were continuing to pay all that debt service and the interest on all that debt, and then you're trying to build new buildings on top of that, with the higher cost of building new buildings would have been a lot more money for our taxpayers in the long run," he said.

Bills said he's excited about the freedom this will allow the district when and if new schools will need to be built.

"What it really does is it allows the school district to be really, really flexible and to be able to deal with needs a little bit faster and react faster," he said. "Because the process to go out and do a bond election and then issue bonds and then start moving forward with projects takes a long time."

The district announced its debt-free timeline at the board meeting held on June 8 to approve both the proposed final budget amounts for the 2025-26 school year and the tentative budget presentation for the 2026-27 school year.

"Our goal is to get what the school district needs and what's best for students and do it at the lowest cost of taxpayers," he said.

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