Public records only. Compiled in a single day, 12 September 2026. Version two, same day.
The record was
always open.
The former Joy Elementary School has stood empty since 1 July 2025. The Borough says it cannot yet describe the consequences of selling or leasing it.
Every figure on this page came out of documents anyone can open. None of it required a records request, a lawyer, or an hour of Borough staff time.
Heat and upkeep for an empty building since the doors closed, at the Borough's own stated rate of $11,500 a month. Fourteen and a half months. The meter has not stopped while the question went unanswered.
Scroll.
The meter
A closed building at 65 degrees north is not a building that costs nothing.
In February 2026 the mayor put the figure at roughly $140,000 a year, about $11,500 a month, to heat and maintain a vacant Joy. In August 2026 he gave the same annual number again. Those are the Borough's figures, not ours.
The closure was projected to save about $54,000 a year. On the Borough's own later numbers, keeping the building closed costs roughly two and a half times what closing it saved. One more figure, reported once and not yet checked against the ordinance itself: the June 2025 measure to keep Joy open through June 2026 was put at $69,590. It failed five to four. If that figure holds, closing cost twice what staying open would have.
The $167,000 above counts heat and basic upkeep only. It excludes insurance, security, snow removal, staff time, and deferred maintenance. The true figure is higher and only the Borough can state it.
The building
Fourteen classrooms in a ring, every one with a window band, built for daylight in 1961 and still glazed for 1961.
Concrete masonry, structural steel, poured slabs. The structure is sound. The envelope is the problem, and the envelope is the one thing the building has already been financed to fix once.
One thing does not reconcile. The 2019 bond paid $1.1 million for roof, insulation and clerestories. June 2025 reporting put the remaining need at $2 million for the roof and $3 million for HVAC. Either the 2019 scope was partial or the estimate covers something else. Only the Borough's project file says which.
- Address
- 24 Margaret StreetThe Borough's parcel record says Avenue. PAN 0093289
- Parcel
- 12.77 acresZoned General Commercial. No assessed value on file, ever
- Built
- 1961Alaska Architectural and Engineering Company
- School closed
- 2022Declining enrolment and budget
- Doors closed
- 1 July 2025Vacant since
- Third-party interest
- One easementMTA Communications, 16,752 sq ft, recorded March 2020
The clock
Sixteen months from the vote to close to a building still waiting on an appraisal.
Assembly votes 5 to 4 to cut Joy from the budget. The majority cites cost reduction and an intent to sell.
Assembly votes 5 to 4 against funding continued operation while divestment is planned.
Closure takes effect. The meter starts.
Borough and City run a joint public survey on future uses. About 1,800 responses.
Mayor states a goal of a divestment or repurposing plan in motion by 1 July 2026, and a formal proposal by the end of the fiscal year.
That target passes. No plan in motion.
Borough is still working to obtain an appraisal before issuing a request for information, to be followed by a request for proposals.
Mayor states that bond counsel needs a proposed plan before the bond consequences can be identified, and that even a range is unavailable.
The money
The financing trail is not missing. It has been sitting in a State board packet since March 2019.
The Alaska Municipal Bond Bank Authority board met on 21 March 2019 and considered a Fairbanks North Star Borough loan application of $10,745,000 over twenty years. The credit review in that packet names the buildings and splits the money.
Joy's share was $1.1 million, for roof, insulation and clerestories, raising the roof from R30 to R100. The credit review states plainly that the loan is not subject to State debt service reimbursement.
The Borough's own audit and budget carry the rest. The tax exempt bonds, 2019 Series U, are still outstanding in full. Not a dollar of principal has been repaid. The first principal payment is $75,000 on 1 May 2029, which is also the earliest date the bonds can be called.
- Tax exempt portion
- $6,950,000Joy, Ladd, North Pole High, Juanita Helms
- Taxable portion
- $3,795,000Carlson Center, Pioneer Park, Civic Center
- Joy's share
- $1.1 millionRoof, insulation, clerestories
- State reimbursed
- No0 percent, in the Borough's budget
- Series U outstanding
- $5,765,000All of it, at 30 June 2026. Interest only since 2019
- Earliest call
- 1 May 2029At par. Joy's share about $0.9 million
Joy's $1.1 million came out of the tax exempt side. Carlson, Pioneer Park and the Civic Center came out of the taxable side. That single split is the whole reason bond counsel is involved in Joy and not in the others.
Tax exempt governmental bonds carry private business use restrictions. Taxable bonds do not carry them the same way. So the question is narrow: what remedy applies if the building passes to private or nonprofit hands. The principal is now known. Pro rata, about $0.9 million of Series U par is Joy's, and a transaction before 2029 would mean an escrow of roughly $1 million to the call date, before bond counsel applies the three things that could make it smaller or zero. Our arithmetic, not an audit.
One older question is closed. Ordinance 2000-012, the $57 million school bond that named Joy, failed at the polls in 2000, 5,241 to 6,098. No debt was ever issued under it. Series U is the only bond on the building.
The pathways
Borough Code already decides most of this, and it rules out the route people assume.
A negotiated sale to a chosen buyer is not available. Direct sale under Borough Code 20.20.090 is limited to parties holding a land interest in, or a recorded easement on, the property, or holding land adjoining it, and only where there is no public use for the land. A lease interest has to have been held four years. No unrelated bidder qualifies, and that includes us.
What remains on the sale side is competitive: auction, over the counter, or a combination. What remains on the lease side is more interesting.
Borough Code 20.16.020(D) lets the Assembly lease below fair rental value if the authorising ordinance contains a finding of compelling public purpose and states the facts behind it. The Assembly used that authority in Ordinance 2025-15 for a below market nonprofit lease, and waived the competitive process requirement in the same ordinance.
That precedent does not establish that Joy qualifies. The finding the Assembly actually made at Newby Park was three sentences: a mission, a nonprofit with volunteers, and rehabilitation of a degrading facility, at one dollar a year. The waiver of the competitive process rested on a prior competitive attempt that drew no responses. Joy has not had that attempt yet.
The competitive route runs through Title 16. A request for proposals needs at least 30 days of public notice, must state how price weighs against other factors, and ends in a lease ordinance. Three to four months from RFP to authorization is a realistic floor, and the request for information before it has no clock at all.
Federal remedial action runs on a 90 day clock keyed to the transaction. The anticipatory route lets the Borough settle the bond question before a buyer exists rather than discover the cost afterwards.
Treasury Regulation 1.141-12 gives three remedies where bond financed property changes hands or use: redeem or defease the nonqualified bonds, apply the disposition proceeds to another qualifying use, or put the building itself to another qualifying use. Under 1.141-12(d)(3) the Borough may declare its intent and act in advance. None of that waits on an appraisal.
One condition cuts against the lease route. Remedial action is available only where the new user pays fair market value in an arm's length arrangement. A one dollar lease of bond financed space to a nonprofit is private business use with no fair market value behind it. The same rule lets fair market value reflect public use restrictions written into the lease, which may be the door. That is a question for bond counsel before a lease is drafted, not after.
What happens next
Our honest read, in two columns. One is the path the record points to. The other is the path the record supports.
What will probably happen
- Appraisal completes some time this winter.
- A request for information goes out, followed months later by a request for proposals under Title 16 procurement.
- Bond counsel is asked the question only once a preferred proposal exists, because that is what the mayor has said is needed.
- The answer arrives in mid 2027 at the earliest, by which point the meter has run past a quarter of a million dollars.
- If the bond cost then turns out to be material, the process restarts around it.
What the record supports
- Pull the 2019 official statement and state the principal still allocable to Joy, and the earliest call date. This is arithmetic on a document the Borough already holds.
- Ask bond counsel the anticipatory question now, under 1.141-12(d)(3). It does not need a buyer and it does not need an appraisal.
- Publish both answers before the request for information, so every bidder prices the same building.
- Run the appraisal in parallel rather than in series. Nothing about it gates the bond work.
- Put a name and a date against each remaining task, and report to the Assembly monthly.
Six blanks, four filled
Version one listed six things the public record could not answer. Version two went and looked. Four came out of documents the Borough itself publishes. Two remain, and only the Borough holds them.
Principal still allocable to Joy $5,765,000 outstanding, about $0.9 million of it Joy's
All of Series U is still outstanding at 30 June 2026. Joy's share is pro rata arithmetic on the 2019 allocation. The Borough's compliance file holds the exact figure.
FNSB audit, 30 June 2025. FY 2026-27 budget, page 426Earliest call date 1 May 2029
At par, on any date after. First principal payment lands the same day. A transaction before then means an escrow to the call date.
2019 official statement, optional redemptionOlder debt on the building None. Ordinance 2000-012 failed at the polls
5,241 to 6,098 at a 2000 special election. No bonds issued. No other proposition since 1963 names Joy. State reimbursement on Series U is zero.
FNSB Index of PropositionsAssessed value None on file, ever
The Borough does not assess its own exempt parcel and carries no structure record for it. The appraisal is the only route to a number. The bond work does not wait for it.
FNSB Property Search, PAN 0093289Appraisal status
Ordered when, by whom, due when. Actual spend since closure sits behind the same door.
Borough administrationHas the anticipatory question been asked
Whether bond counsel has been asked anything that does not require a completed transaction. On 27 August 2026 the mayor said Joy "still has school bond obligations on it." The record above says what they are.
Borough administration and bond counsel