Fairfield City Schools’ dwindling permanent improvement fund has forced the district to draw money from its general fund, picking and choosing projects that must be fixed, officials say.

The permanent improvement fund pays for repairs and maintenance to items like roofs and boilers. In better economic times, that fund brought in $2.3 million per year. It currently has about $4,000 left, according to Treasurer Nancy Lane. Voters turned down a permanent improvement levy in 2008.

To help offset the loss, the board of education approved setting aside $250,000 from the general fund to take care of building repairs and maintenance. However, that amount may not be enough to cover what is needed, Lane said.

Lane said “anywhere from $0 to $1 million, depending on what plans and projects we had that year” are typically spent from the improvement fund.

The type of costs that could spring up are numerous, ranging from a $100,000 boiler to $300,000 to pave the high school parking lot, the treasurer said.

“We’re in a ‘break it, fix it’ mode,” said Lane, who added that paving the high school’s parking lot is on the back burner for now.

After the permanent improvement levy failed, the board decided to draw from that fund only if it were absolutely necessary, but the necessities kept cropping up, said board member Mark Morris. For example, the board decided to spend $250,000 on a chiller for the high school after the air conditioning failed.

“We can take money out of the operating (general) found, but then we’d have to stop doing something else, because we don’t have excess capital,” he said.

The board hasn’t had to stop any programs yet, but, “we’re at that point,” Morris said.

The lack of permanent improvement funds is also why the district’s bus fleet hasn’t been replenished on a regular basis, he said.

Complicating matters is the fact that the state is recalculating its funding formula, and the district won’t know the results until 2014.

“It’s hard to plan when you don’t know what’s going to be happen it makes look foolish … we’ve become short-term planners,” Morris said.

Billy Smith, the assistant superintendent for business and the former high school principal, said it comes down to hoping that nothing major happens.

“It’s hard to predict. I wish I had a crystal ball. But we have no idea of knowing what crisis might occur. We keep our fingers crossed,” Smith said.

To reinstate the permanent improvement fund, the board would need to put another permanent improvement levy on the ballot. However, because an operating levy was passed only a year ago, officials are loathe to go that route, Lane said.