By Alice Waugh
In response to residents’ requests at a multiboard meeting to discuss school renovations, officials made a last-minute change in the Town Meeting agenda so the School Committee could ask for money to find out what exclusively town-funded school renovations might cost.
Early during the February 12 meeting with selectmen and Finance Committee members, the School Committee said its plan for the March 29 Town Meeting was to simply present a report on repair needs at the school, with no funding request attached. The group also decided that it would not file another request for state funding this spring.
Instead, they suggested, the town should wait until October 2014 and then vote at a special Town Meeting on two questions: (1) whether to try again for state funding for a major project, and (2) whether to approve spending to study other, exclusively Lincoln-funded options.
The School Committee decided last month on this go-slow approach in response to voters’ rejection of a $49 million school project in 2012 and the state’s subsequent denial of funding for a modified construction/renovation plan that would have preserved the “L-shaped configuration” of the current school. If the Town Meeting vote had approved the proposal by a two-thirds majority in November 2012, the state would have kicked in $21 million of the $49 million total.
The committee had hoped that a “yes” vote on whether to submit another statement of interest (SOI) for funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) would show state officials that there was voter consensus on the need for a major construction project and political support for working with the state.
But some of the 35 residents objected to the plan presented by the School Committee, saying they wouldn’t be able to make an informed decision on the state funding question without having at least a general idea of what various “Lincoln only” options would cost.
Warrant articles for the March 29 Town Meeting, including the “report only” item from the School Committee, were due to be finalized by the Board of Selectmen on the day after the multiboard meeting. But in a change of course, the committee decided instead to go back to an earlier plan and ask for money at Town Meeting (the exact amount to be decided before March 29) to study costs for various “Lincoln-only” repair/renovation scenarios.
Minimum repair needs outlined
School Committee chair Jennifer Glass explained that trying to get into the state’s accelerated repair program to help pay for the most pressing physical needs of the school was “not an option for Lincoln.” This is because the state has already agreed that the school needs much more than the limited repairs that the program would fund.
“The MSBA is very careful with its money and will not pay for projects that might be negated by subsequent renovations,” Glass said.
At the minimum over the next five years, the school must have new roofing, new walls in Reed Gym, a new boiler in the Smith building, a new smokestack at Brooks, some new windows and window walls, and various safety and security upgrades, said Buck Creel, the school district’s administrator for business and finance.
Assuming there was no state aid, the town would have to pay for these projects on its own, which it could do in various ways: making repairs as needed, doing a single renovation project, doing a single project combining renovation and new construction, or doing a phased project of renovations along with new construction to meet the educational needs that were also addressed by the earlier rejected plan. Those needs include one or two cafeterias, small teacher/student breakout rooms, and a link from the Reed Gym to the main building.
The non-educational “must-do” items would cost a total of roughly $8.5 million, Creel said. That amount doesn’t include costs for studies, design, project management, or “swing space” while parts of the building were closed for repairs (for example, modular classrooms or Hartwell pod upgrades). The spending would require “a successive override of significant amounts of dollars for the next… I don’t know how many years,” he said.
Doing several smaller repair projects over time “initially seems appealing because you’re not spending all your money at once, but it’s likely to cost taxpayers more over time and cause a longer period of disruption” for students and teachers, Creel said.
Having several funding pathways to choose from is fine, Selectman Renel Fredriksen said, “but I’m getting the impression that submitting an SOI and going with state funding is a straight line to a $60 million project… there are no variations there.”
In the last go-round with the state, there were initially 11 design options; “you have to narrow it down to one pathway so you can get detailed cost estimates and then the MSBA will tell you how much they will reimburse,” Glass said. “We won’t develop 11 options again, but we’d develop some range, and the process for narrowing it down to one would be a publicly developed process.”
Regardless of how many repair/renovation choices there might be, “there’s not going to be a $10 million option with the MSBA. It’s going to be a comprehensive project [with] big dollars,” Glass added.
Objections to a single SOI vote
Resident Sara Mattes and others objected to having a yes-or-no vote on whether to submit another SOI to the state. “Politically that’s a stacked deck,” she said. “You need to have all the information and choices at the same time.”
“You’re asking us to make a big decision without knowing the plan or the consequences,” said resident Adam Greenberg, adding that the SOI process “doesn’t leave us a whole lot of latitude.” Items in the SOI should be prioritized to reach a “comfort level” of what the town is willing to spend, he said. “I’m concerned that we’re going full bore with something that’s too expensive right out of the gate.”
“Those are the needs [in the SOI] that exist and they’ve been carefully looked at,” Glass said. “To step back and say those are not needs is not going to make a very credible application to the MSBA.”
SOI “fluff” debated
Resident Vincent Cannistraro, who is running against Peter Braun for a seat on the Board of Selectmen, disagreed. “There a lot of good in [the SOI] but there is also, with all due respect, fluff,” he said. For example, the town does not need to build an enclosed structure from the main building to the gym to solve security issues at the gym.
“You’re insulting my intelligence,” Cannistraro said. “Are you saying we’re the only town with two separate buildings? Don’t tell me my kid is going to be in danger. I can go to BestBuy and get a security camera for $100. I know for a fact there’s a $15 million option out there, a $25 million option out there, and so on.”
There have been four studies and two committees looking at the school, “and every single one of the has come up with something over $40 million. The idea that we’re going to convince the state government that all of those people are wrong is just politically naive at a extraordinary level,” said Finance Committee member Eric Harris, who stepped away from the table to emphasize that he was speaking in a personal rather than official capacity.
Referring to the notion that “we’re going to somehow rewrite the SOI to get a cheaper option,” Harris said, “We shouldn’t even bother because it’s not going to work.”
Resident Maggy Pietropaolo, who served on the School Building Advisory Committee with Cannistraro, said that group studied the SOI carefully.
“After we went through it and got Vincent to agree with every number, there was no way to do the minimum repairs for less than the magical $7 million,” which is the threshold at which the state requires school projects to also bring the building up to code, Pietropaolo said. “And there’s no way to do minimum code compliance for less than $5 million, so that’s $12 million with no educational benefits just to fix just the bare minimum.”
Another factor to consider is the upcoming transition in the governor’s office and its effects on the MSBA. “That whole environment could change radically in one year or two years,” Mattes said.
More education needed?
Resident Virginia Lemire urged the School Committee to actively engage and educate residents by having a series of neighborhood meetings in addition to committee meetings and town votes. “I suspect they don’t know how bad the school situation is… they just say it’s too much money,” she said. “It’s incredible that we’re not reaching out to people… Come on, School Committee!
Board of Selectman Chair Peter Braun agreed with the need for more outreach. “I’m continually surprised in conversations with multiple people in town who say, ‘I don’t get it’,” he commented.
