Manheim Township school board is considering floating two bonds of about $20 million each to pay for a new intermediate school it plans to build over the next two years.
Board members Thursday reviewed funding options and design plans for the proposed $41.8 million Landis Run Intermediate School but made no decisions.
The district's financial advisers are recommending the board float the first bond in December and the second in December 2011.
Based on interest rates averaging 4.75 percent and 4.87 percent, repaying the bonds would add a total of 0.614 mills to the district's tax rate, boosting the property tax bill for the average homeowner by about $92 per year beginning in 2014-15.
That extra millage would be phased in over four years, beginning in 2011-12. In each of the first two years, 0.153 mills would be added. That would increase by 0.154 mills in each of the next two years.
Taxpayers would bear the full brunt of the increases from 2014-15 until the first bond is repaid in 2026-27.
Joe Kurjiaka, the district's chief operations officer, said the projections are based on conservative interest and revenue numbers, and the actual impact on millage is likely to be less.
The bonds, with interest and fees, would add about $66.3 million to the district's current debt load of $168.8 million.
The board is expected to take action on the financing by August, the same month the project is scheduled to go out for bids.
Plans call for the three-story school for grades five and six to be built on a site southeast of the high school, along Valley Road.
An access drive would be built off Blue Streak Drive, and a walking trail that now cuts through the site would be redirected around the new school.
Landis Run is designed to enroll about 1,200 fifth- and sixth-graders and free up space at the district's six elementary schools to create room for a proposed districtwide full-day kindergarten program.
The intermediate school would include a wing containing about 60 classrooms and a central structure with a main entrance and administrative offices, a gymnasium, stage, cafeteria and orchestra and band rooms.
Instead of a geothermal heating and cooling system — the design used in all district school construction projects in recent years — Landis Run would use a natural gas/electric heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system.
A geothermal design was rejected, in part, because of the potentially excessive cost of drilling a well field on the rocky site, said Joshua Bower, project manager with Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates Architects.
The natural gas/electric system also will have a quicker payback than a geothermal system in energy savings, Bower said.
The school board expects to award bids on the project in October, and construction could begin the following month.
Completion is expected by summer 2012.
bwallace@lnpnews.com 
