After years of planning, the Lake Travis ISD’s transportation-distribution center is nearing its destination.

Board members awarded a $7.71 million construction bid to FTWOODS Construction at their regular meeting Dec. 17 for the project, which is the last of the district’s 2006 bond package items.
It will feature enough bus parking for about 2.5 times the number of buses the district uses now. The existing transportation facility will be renovated into a new maintenance headquarters building.
The district had planned to put the project out for bids in 2006, but decided to delay it in favor of constructing educational facilities first and acquiring an ideal site for the transportation center.
“I am very pleased that we are able to award this tonight. It’s been a journey … in getting the land and getting there on this project. We are finally got to the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Jim Ratcliffe, LTISD senior director of facilities, construction and support services.
FTWOODS’ bid is about $1.1 million less than Ratcliffe said he was expecting in June.
He expected construction to begin in January 2010 and finish in October or November of that year on the site at 16101 Texas 71 in the City of Bee Cave’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.
“We have a good site; there’s no question about it. It’s well located centrally in the district particularly for a transportation center, but it does have some challenges to it,” Ratcliffe said.
Because the site contains water quality features in the Little Barton Creek watershed, it is subject to Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality regulations for water quality filtration ponds and stormwater re-irrigation. The bus wash facility will have to use 100 percent recycled water and incinerate any sludge produced on site.
“Obviously, all of these had costs involved with them,” Ratcliffe said.
Independent accountants shined the spotlight on more of the district’s costs in its 2008-09 audit of LTISD.
Ashlee Martin of Maxwell Locke & Ritter LLP presented the firm’s audit of LTISD’s financial accountability for 2008-09 and announced the district received an unqualified opinion, which is the best possible rating.
The district’s net assets equaled $45 million, $22.2 million of which were unrestricted. At the end of the fiscal year, its unreserved, undesignated fund balance for the general fund was $22.3 million, or 29 percent of its total general fund expenditures.
The district collected $79.26 million in property tax revenues for the fiscal year compared to $69.91 million in 2008.
In August, the district had total bonded debt outstanding of $192.6 million, a decrease of $7.8 million from 2008. LTISD’s underlying credit rating is AA+ by Standard and Poor’s and AA- by Fitch Rating Services.
It’s unreserved general fund balance is $1.62 million.
“It speaks to the health of the district. You are right where you need to be as far as fund balance goes,” Martin said.
Board members also approved amendments to its 2006 bond program. LTISD took a $2.02 million hit to its budgeted $3.86 million contingency fund for the program in order to spend an additional $668,000 for land purchases and $1.355 on the transportation-distribution facility, said Johnny Hill, assistant superintendent for business and financial services.
The district, however, budgeted $15.75 million for land costs in the bond package and will spend $15.06 million.