Town officials wrestled on Monday night with how to present the various school project choices to voters at the Special Town Meeting on June 9. And the biggest barrier to passage, unlike in 2012, will probably be building cost rather than design.
Even if a plan is approved in June, it still may see some changes; the June vote is only on the cost and the footprint, School Building Committee (SBC) Chair Chris Fasciano noted. In 2011-2012, the “preferred option”—a mostly new, 164,000-square-foot building with a two-story addition for $64 million—morphed into a 140,000-square-foot, $49.9 million building with a one-story addition that was only 35 percent new, once the schematic designs were finished and Town Meeting voted.
As for the mechanics of the vote itself, the tentative plan is to offer all six of the current options for a first vote by paper ballot to residents in the Brooks auditorium and in overflow space in the Reed gym. Then the two concepts with the most votes would go on to s second stand-and-count vote in both venues. Architects will then develop schematic designs for the winner, and there will be a bonding vote in the fall.
A simple majority is required for concept approval in June. The vote to bond the project in the fall will require a two-thirds majority at Town Meeting plus a simple majority at the ballot box shortly thereafter.
If the fall Town Meeting vote doesn’t pass by a two-thirds majority, the next step will depend on how close the vote is. Since the town is not bound by Massachusetts School Building Authority deadlines as it was in 2012, officials can continue to refine concepts and schedule more Special Town Meetings until a project wins approval. However, if the June vote is lopsidedly negative, “it means we missed a step on the way and we’ll have to regroup and see where we are,” Selectman Jennifer Glass said.
The Finance Committee also spent considerable time on Monday night grilling school officials and architects on details of how they arrived at their cost estimates and assumptions of how big the school building needs to be. Their questions followed up on written answers to dozens of questions that the SBC had submitted before the meeting.
The FinCom will meet on Thursday, May 3 to come up with a recommendation to the town—either for a specific option or “just a set of boundaries,” Chair Jim Hutchinson said. The SBC is trying to leave the decision in the hands of voters as much as possible, but “there will be something coming from our committee to let folks know what we’re thinking” in terms of a preferred concept, Fasciano added.
Residents at Monday’s multiboard meeting offered various other suggestions for the June vote, including allowing voters to choose which educational enhancements they would most like to see, or offering them a choice of three price points rather than specific design concepts.
Feedback from the various public forums so far has been overwhelmingly in favor of a compact building shape offering a high level of educational enhancement over the current school. However, people who attend such forums are often more engaged and informed and tend to be in favor of a project in general, and there will be a much broader cross-section of voters at Town Meeting, Glass noted.
Meanwhile, architects will present a seventh design concept to the SBC this week, and there will be another public forum in May to gauge sentiment and try to narrow down the options to be considered in June.
The June vote will focus only on a school project; the Community Center Preliminary Planning and Design Committee has agreed since the beginning of the planning process that construction on a community center will not start until after the school is complete, most likely in 2023. This is mainly because the school campus does not have space for construction staging areas and student swing space for two simultaneous projects, and there would not be any cost savings since the two projects are of such different sizes that the same contractors would not bid on both, officials said.
This is a disappointment to some seniors in town, including Barbara Low. “is it going to be another 10 years before a community center is looked at because there won’t be any more money [after the school project]?” she said.
But Hutchinson reassured her that town finances will not stand in the way. “We’re pretty comfortable that the community center could fairly quickly follow the school building project,” he said.
Though the bonding for both projects could be done in one go—or even borrowing the full amount for just the school in a single bond issue—this would be the :worst-case scenario,” hutchinson said. “Spreading it out will soften the impact a little bit.”
Current estimates for the school project range from $49 million to $109 million. Finance officials have already determined that the town can borrow up to about $97 million without affecting its bond rating or needing special permission from the state. However, the effect on individual property tax bills will carry more weight when it comes to how people vote, they noted.
“What the town can afford in a debt load/bond rating sense is not necessarily the same as residents’ appetite for expenditure,” FinCom member Andy Payne said. “What will residents be willing to invest in? That’s a very tough question to answer outside the ballot box but we’re trying to figure that out.”
