MANKATO — Taxpayers have received a whole lot more than they bargained for after passing Mankato Area Public Schools’ $33 million bond referendum in April 2008.

When the referendum was approved, the housing market was still booming and gasoline was selling for $4 per gallon.

By September of the same year, however, the stock market began plummeting, foreclosure rates began creeping toward levels not seen in decades and employers began hemorrhaging jobs — including Mankato schools, which adjusted its budget by $4 million and laid off dozens of teachers in the two years since the referendum’s approval.

But strictly speaking in terms of referendum construction, the recession’s timing couldn’t have been better. Due to the resulting slowdown in available construction work, nearly every bid for the school district’s bond projects came in lower than budgeted.

Rosa Parks, originally estimated to cost $23 million, was built for slightly less than $20 million. The Eagle Lake expansion, estimated at $6.4 million, was completed for less than $4.8 million.

The Mankato East elevator and Mankato West science room projects also cost 20 to 25 percent less than estimates.

With the savings, the school district invested in a combination of maintenance projects and rebates for taxpayers — spending that would have been nearly impossible otherwise.

Jerry Kolander, business manager for Mankato schools, said the district never predicted a recession and chose the timing of the referendum based on the additional space needed to accommodate the district’s rising enrollment. He said the irony of a recession being a positive thing for taxpayers wasn’t lost on school officials.

“We did not intend to use the money the way we did,” he said.

But as the savings became more apparent, Kolander said administrators began discussing ways to spend the money that remained in the spirit of the bond’s intention — to “provide funds for the acquisition and betterment of school sites and facilities” (the exact wording of the ballot question).

Knowing that capital and deferred maintenance budgets are often the first to be raided in difficult budget times — for the last two years the state has allowed districts to transfer funds from those accounts into the general fund to stave off cuts — administrators began making a list of needed maintenance projects.

Additional projects completed by excess bond funds include:

• Three-year refund to taxpayers ($1.5 million);
• Elevator, door and stair replacements at several sites ($232,000);
• Roofing repairs at Washington Elementary, Hoover Elementary and Mankato East ($754,000);
• Tuckpointing at Hoover, Monroe and Garfield Elementaries as well as at East ($385,00);
• Air conditioning, boiler and generator upgrades at Mankato West ($534,000);
• Window replacements at Lincoln Community Center ($699,000).

With a capital budget of about $500,000 per year, Kolander said such projects would have been left on the wayside without excess bond funds.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do those projects,” he said, adding later: “We wanted to give the public the best bang for their dollar.”