Above: Residents can check out what a Yes or No vote means to their property tax bills and take a virtual tour of the school that the Town is looking to replace. (images from project website and SAM)
Over the next week, Southborough voters are being asked to vote twice on a proposed project for a new school for grades 3-5 on the site of the current Neary School. It would be the biggest building investment the Town has ever made.
Here’s my (overdue) look at the many promoted and debated aspects of the project.
Voting on the project
The article at a Special Town Meeting on Saturday, May 10th will ask voters to approve funding the “costs of designing, constructing, reconstructing and equipping” the school. The share that Southborough taxpayers would be responsible for (after state reimbursements and energy rebates) is estimated as $68,202,266 (including contingencies for unforseen costs).
Borrowing for the project will require approval from more than 2/3 of participating voters. The meeting is 9:00 am at Algonquin.
Next Tuesday, May 13th, the annual Town Election ballot will include a proposition 2½ override question. (Under state law, Towns can’t increase the year over year tax levy by more than 2½% unless the majority of ballot voters exempt the expense and annual debt service payments from the calculation.)
For more details on voting, click here.
Both approvals are needed for the project to proceed. But the Town has a opportunity to revisit votes if they fail. If one or more of the votes fail, Town officials will have to regroup and decide how to proceed.
Project overview and stated need
The project to build a new school for grades 3-5 on the site of the current Neary School (for grades 4-5). Once completed, the Finn School would be decommissioned as a school. (Scroll down to Projected Tax Impacts for more on Finn.) Woodward School would shift to educate grades Pre-K to 1.
The total cost is projected to cost up to $108,517,025. On Wednesday, the Mass School Building Authority (MSBA) voted to approve reimbursing the Town up to $35,279,062.1
In a presentation on April 10th, Superintendent Gregory Martineau highlighted that the current Neary School building, which was designed in the 1960’s and built in the early 1970’s is a far cry from meeting modern building codes. It isn’t ADA compliant, has no fire suppression/sprinkler system, and “wasn’t designed in a time where the same thought and planning went into school security”. Since built the only real work beyond maintenance has been the addition of permanent module classrooms and “some improvements to the roof”. The state of the building has required having school lunches cooked up at Trottier Middle School and transported down the hill to Neary.
[Note: This week, Southborough Access Media posted a video to allow the public to virtually tour the current building conditions here.]
Martineau pitched the new building design as prioritizing “student and staff safety with state-of-the-art security systems including controlled entry points, surveillance, emergency response plans, and. . . secure learning environments where we’re building a strong sense of community.”
Martineau and members of the Neary Building Committee (NBC) promote the new building as designed to enhance learning. One of the benefits frequently touted is reducing the number of transitions for young students. (In Southborough’s current school system, students change schools every two years until they reach Trottier Middle School.)
The project is also prompted by the concern that the state of the current school and its roof would soon require investing in to keep the doors open. Those investments could trigger an expensive building project to bring the building up to code without other desired improvements. That would be costly given the concrete block structure and building materials that included asbestos.2
A couple of years ago, that “base repair” was roughly estimated at about $64M, with no financial support from the state. (Because the Town didn’t pursue that avenue, they never really dug into how much that figure could be trimmed. On the other hand, they also haven’t worked on updating it to keep up with inflation.)
It’s important to note that the big figure isn’t the one used in the cost comparison of Yes & No votes recently posted by the NBC.
The project will require Neary to be closed for two years and Finn and Woodward schools to accommodate the change. The posted project costs include the lease of modular classrooms to make that possible. (For more on the project timeline and student relocation plan, click here.)
Projected tax impacts for homeowners (Yes vs No vote)
NBC Financial Subcommittee member (and Advisory Committee Chair) Andrew Pfaff put together an analysis of the project’s impact on taxes and the difference between a Yes and No vote.
The updated analysis shows an annual difference of about $600 for an average home. (There are assumptions and omissions worth noting. Scroll down for info on that.) But homeowners should be more interested in the projected cost for their home.
For individualized data, resident Timothe Litt helped the NBC add a “calculator” to the project website that is linked to the Town’s property tax records. Clicking here leads to a page where the public can enter a name or address (or property id) to pull up the info on what their projected costs are each year through 2032, and the projected total costs for the over 30 years it will take for the Town to fully pay down the debt. The image right is an example using a property with a value that is close to the FY25 median home value in Southborough. [Note: I redacted the identifying info rather than spotlighting a random homeowner!]
Financial Assumptions
For the purposes of calculating the difference between a Yes and No vote, Pfaff didn’t incorporate the cost of pursuing the “base repair” project at Neary estimated at $64M. Instead, he included only the list of items that had previously been reported by a consultant would be needed “just to keep the lights on and doors open” at Neary.
I reached out this morning, and he explained that he didn’t include the larger figure because he believed the listed repairs might not necessarily trigger the requirement to bring the building fully up to modern code. He did include a few ADA compliance fixes, like making some (but not all) of Neary’s bathrooms handicap accessible. (He reasoned that if the other fixes on the list were being made and the school kept open the Town would want to do that.)
On the other side of the equation, Pfaff also didn’t include some additional potential savings under the “YES Vote” scenario.
He didn’t deduct from tax impacts any savings from more efficient transportation (estimated at 15-20 fewer minutes per bus), energy savings from the “Net Zero” building, or lower out-of-district placement costs from being able to school more special education students at Neary versus paying to send them elsewhere. The Financial Subcommittee didn’t want to risk over promising on those. (In a recent meeting, NBC Chair Jason Malinowski also noted that there was too much uncertainty about how the schools would handle bus contracts in the future to count on savings from shorter trips.)
During Pfaff’s presentation to the Select Board, he and members discussed the “real” issue causing pain for taxpayers is the projected rising taxes outside of the Neary project. Pfaff described his projection of the costs as making conservative assumptions. In reality, the board and Advisory will try to find ways to keep the tax increases down.
Using the data, I created the graphs below to highlight the projected difference between the votes for the average homeowner and a few other levels of assessed home values in town.
You can see the detailed projections with the assumptions made here.
The project costs a calculated to include a $4M rebate from the federal government for energy efficiency through the geothermal heating/cooling system. In public meetings, commenters have worried that the new administration might cut that funding. There have been media reports that unlike some other clean energy initiatives, geothermal is an industry that the president supports. Still some have publicly worried that the administration may target Massachusetts for being a “blue state”.
Finn School Impact and Expense
The “Yes Vote” includes a $3M expense to convert Finn School for the purpose of housing some Town offices. In a recent meeting, the Select Board discussed what might/might not be done with Finn.
There wasn’t unanimity in an approach. But they agreed that no one has an appetite for a $15M project there to turn it into a community center. (And referring to purported rumors on social media, they clarified there are no plans to use the site for affordable housing.)
Making a decision about Finn is something they would ask the Capital Planning Committee to research if the new school project passes. (The process would include seeking community input.)
Savings from Consolidating Schools
The savings that were incorporated were from reduced salaries and benefits through consolidating school staff. The NSBORO administration has stated that instead of two principals, there will be one Principal and an Assistant Principal. Other staff reductions will come from eliminated positions. Those are staff that will be retiring and not replaced, to avoid layoffs.
The NSBORO administrators had been hesitant on publicly sharing details. But given pushback from community members who were skeptical, Pfaff pursued the details. He vetted the benefits savings with the Town’s Finance team, and shared them with me today for readers to review. (Click here.) He also noted that the savings are actually higher than the figures he had used in his analysis.
At the time the NBC decided to pursue a 4 grade instead of 2 grade building, Southborough’s share of estimated costs for the choices were projected to be $84.7M or $64.7M. In last week’s Select Board meeting, Pfaff highlighted that he feels even better about the committee’s decision now that the cost has lowered and the “conservative” projected operational savings for consolidating schools are projected at $68 million over the 33 year period to pay off the bond.
Select Board member Al Hamilton countered that the operational savings were only worth about $17M “worth of borrowing for 30 years” and only if you “believe” the savings are real.
During that meeting last week, board members discussed with their auditor the potential impact of the project on the Town’s bond rating.
There had been public worries that the debt combined with other future projects could lead to lower ratings and higher than projected debt service costs for both the school borrowing and other future projects that require bonding. At last week’s meeting, it looked like that wasn’t a significant concern.
Consultant Tony Roselli noted that these types of school building projects are common and expected in towns with high bond ratings. He predicted the worst case scenario would be going from AAA bond rating to AA+, which would be a “miniscule” difference.
Some community members have worried about the potential for the construction costs to spike beyond projections, especially given uncertainty around tariffs. In a recent public forum, Malionwski stressed that the deal with the MSBA means that the total cost of the project can’t exceed the agreed upon contingency without going back to the MSBA for approval, “and it’s a whole process”.
He explained that means boards and committees can’t just “arbitrarily” decide to increase the cost. Instead they may need to make design tweaks or reconsider timing of certain things. He noted that the “good thing” was that following a yes vote, the steps required before going out to bid on construction means that by that time “we’re going to have a lot more clarity on what that situation is.”
Public Concerns & Pushback
While it wasn’t news that the Town was investigation a potential school building project, when the big estimate was announced, that did appear to send shockwaves through the community.
Since then, estimates have come down, but it is still a big spend.
Although some residents vocally support it as needed, there are also some who have been publicly raising an alarm about the cost and/or the location.
A group of residents posted a “No vote” letter that urges “There is a Plan B”. That pushes for the Town to pull back on this project and instead look at more cost effective ways to use our existing school buildings while still closing Neary.
A more recent follow up letter from Patricia Burns Fiore, one of the original letter writers, clarifies that she began work on “Plan B” (which project proponents argue isn’t a real plan) after realizing the Town didn’t have a proposed alternative path if the proposed project fails to be approved.
Fiore has acknowledged “everyone knows that something needs to be done about Neary”. But she argues the process didn’t look hard enough at options to maximize the use of current buildings to accommodate students.
The fact that the MSBA dictated which 12 options the Town could consider was part of her issue. Malinowski and Martineau have publicly explained that MSBA had prevented the Town from considering and proposing a new building at Finn School as part of their work on a project for partial state reimbursement. They were told that it wasn’t allowed because their application had specified a school for grades 2-5, and didn’t include evaluation of changes to grades K-1.
Fiore has argued that MSBA is geared to support a new building project. NBC member Kathy Cook rebutted that their decisions were based on the information the state had on ours schools and our system. (That information stems from the earlier work done by the research subcommittee. Scroll down for more about the history of the project.)
In a forum in early April, Fiore made her upset over the projected expense clear:
We have been hearing for years in this town we need more affordable housing. . . when you are going to tax people out of their houses because of building a school like this, in addition to the other programs that we need to complete in this town, I don’t want to hear anybody talk to me about affordable housing.
She argued that the Town’s past long term tax projections haven’t been accurate, so she doesn’t have confidence in the recent ones. And she summed up that it’s a “wonderful beautiful school” and she appreciated the time and effort put into the project, “but this is a want and not a necessity given the cost and the fiscal climate that we have.”
NBC member Mark Davis responded:
I made this argument 30 years ago with Algonquin that a strong and good school system attracts people and the day I sell my house I will sell it quicker, and I will sell it possibly for more money. And to me that’s worth it. I could barely afford to move to this town, but somehow I’ve made it work for 45 years and I’ll make it work for another 45.
He also stated that his pet peeve has been paying too much to operate the buildings, including on energy costs and maintaining the schools. He posited that if they reduced those costs, there would be more to spend on educating the kids. (Part of the presentation included the planned geothermal heating/cooling system that will be much more energy efficient as part of the “net zero building” which will also be “solar ready”.)
Senior Stan Moschella objected to Davis’ comment about property values:
If this really comes down to you feeling like you’re going to make more money selling your house because you have this brand new school, I think you need to really consider the future of the town rather than your own financial interests here.
He followed by talking about the “huge amount” or road infrastructure that needs repairs. He referred to the Town as realistically poor. He noted that decades ago Southborough had a volunteer fire department and now we have a police and fire “palace” and “all of these big building projects”. He said that part of him wants to support the project, but part says that the small town should have small schools.
In response to project detractors, Malinowski has argued that kicking the can down the road will still require the Town to invest in the schools in coming years. It would likely be several years before the MSBA would consider partnering on a new project with the Town. And in the meantime construction costs will continue to rise.
In public meetings and on social media, some commenters have pointed to the the economic climate and potential for a recession as adding to their distress about the town potentially committing to funding a costly project.
Some of the arguments have focused on whether or not the Town could save money by shifting 5th grade into students to Trottier Middle School. (That’s something the NSBORO administration firmly opposes.)
Other arguments (including comments on this blog) have focused on concerns about investing in a new building downhill from a landfill. Some residents worry there could be toxic environmental issues in the future. The Town investigated the situation and is seeking to dissuade those fears.
Scroll further down for more on both of those topics. But first, more on project benefits that the Town and Schools are promoting. . .
Educational Benefits
A forum focusing on the Educational Benefits was held on April 10th. (You can view that here.)
In the presentation, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, Stefanie Reinhorn, stressed, “one of the things we hear from parents regularly about is and from teachers is the challenge of the many transitions”. She pointed to the proposed school for grades 3-5 as allowing “greater continuity” for students, families, and more seamless academic progression, and for kids’ “social emotional experience”. She touted increased opportunities for “cross-grade level collaboration”, and peer leadership and mentoring.
One of the aspects of the school that the administration is clearly enthusiastic about is the “learning neighborhoods” that site each grade in its own section (a floor of a wing). Reinhorn highlighted areas for special education use (see pink rooms in the design right). The smaller rooms are sandwiched between classrooms with doorways (to them and the hall) allowing for private small group instruction.
Reinhorn explained that by increasing the amount of special education programming that can be done there, they would be able to bring “back into the district” some special ed students that currently need to be educated out-of-district.
Another highlight was the setup of the music room (with necessary acoustics), to the rear and level with the stage that faces the cafeteria. A retractable wall would enable the stage to accommodate a large orchestra or chorus, and the cafeteria is large enough to either seat the entire school or two grades plus their parents and families.
In a separate presentation on the site conditions, Davis touted another way the project could benefit students. He noted that when windows in the current building are shut from October to April, the air that is recycled tends to result in higher CO2 levels which contributes to students feeling drowsy. The new ventilation system will have air monitors in the rooms that trigger cycling in fresh air when CO2 the level rise. He followed, “from what we understand the research is, it really helps the kids to focus on what they’re doing”.
In that same forum, Fiore questioned how the NBC could argue that the school doesn’t currently meet the educational needs of its students, given that it is currently ranked #13 out of 1,000 schools. (She was referring to U.S. News & World Report’s 2025 ranking of 957 Massachusetts elementary schools.)
Davis responded, “our teachers have been successful at providing a terrific education, but the facilities are dragging us down. . . I think as a town we can do much better.” He also argued, that given the state of the building, “we are entering a period and have already entered it where it’s going to be very difficult to find qualified teachers. . . we’re going to have difficulties in attracting the best and the brightest “.
For more about the project benefits, see the Neary Building Project website, presentations, and FAQs here.
Arguments for and against and 5th graders at Trottier
Project opponents have pointed to other communities with 5th-8th grade middle schools to argue that it is a reasonable solution for solving the space issues. (The school was designed to hold far more students than it currently has.)
The topic was addressed in NBC’s forum on the project’s Educational Benefits. Upon questioning, NSBORO administrators defended that their stance against incorporating the 5th grade students into the school.
They explained that the building isn’t designed in a way that would allow them to keep the 5th and 6th graders as one unit and 7th and 8th graders in another.
Reinhorn said that when elementary students were on buses with middle schoolers they heard complaints from parents opposed to that. She confirmed that they wouldn’t want 5th graders sharing bathrooms with 8th graders.
The Asst. Superintendent of Operations, Keith Lavoie drew on his experience to oppose the concept. Lavoie is the former school Principal, and previously worked as a teacher then Asst. Principal at the school.
He said that it wasn’t feasible to squeeze additional students into the current lunch schedule.He described that back at Trottier’s peak capacity, having 109 students in the cafeteria was “insufferabale”. He claimed many students “could not remain in the cafeteria and we had to find alternative places for them to go”. If 5th grade was added, it would require adding a fourth wave of lunchtime, with students eating at 10:00 am or 1:00 pm.
He also described the school’s performing arts and art rooms as having “pretty full” schedules. He said adding another grade “would be very challenging to do and there would be fragmentation to that that would be unrecoverable”.
Martineau followed that it still wouldn’t resolve the issue of housing 4th grade.
Addressing Project Site and Environmental Concerns
On April 16th, the NBC held a forum focusing on concerns publicly raised about the new school being built downhill from the site of a former Town landfill. They sought to reassure the public that the site is a safe location for a school building and explain why the site was chosen.
Representing the NBC was Davis, who has extensive experience in construction and formerly served on Planning Board and other committees, including involvement in the Algonquin building project. That night (and in other meetings) Davis made clear that his own concerns about the suitability and safety of the site were part of what prompted him to be part of the committee. He pushed to make sure the safety of the site was vetted to his satisfaction.
Under state law, the Town is required to contract a “third party inspector” to regularly inspect the landfill to ensure the cap integrity is maintained. For the past six years, that work has been done by Tim Theis of Pare Engineering who explained the history and process to forum attendees and answered questions.
The landfill under Lundblad Field on Parkerville Road was use by the Town starting in the early 1930s through sometime in the 1970s, then finally “capped” in the late 1990s. Theis described the landfill as used for as the Municipal Solid Waste”, which he described as “best of the worst”. (It is considered less hazardous than an industrial or hazardous waste site.)
In the meeting, engineer Theis referred to the cap as a membrane plus the soil above it. (In a prior forum, Davis described it as capped using clay.) Inspections include an annual visual inspection for any degradation. They have sometime discovered animal burrows that need to be filled. They check for any damage to the soil gas probes that are sampled quarterly. They also sample groundwater monitoring wells.
The new building project would add some additional monitoring wells closer to the school. Upon later questioning, Theis said that while caps were designed for 30 years he wasn’t aware of any engineered caps that had degraded to the point where they need to be recapped. He indicated that the pat of the point of monitoring them was to keep them maintained so that they don’t degrade.
According to Theis, so far results have not turned up “anything in the groundwater that is particularly alarming”. Most compounds have result too low to be detected and all are well below the levels allowed by MassDEP (Dept of Environmental Protection). The compounds that were detected were mostly also naturally occurring minerals — iron, arsenic, and cadmium. (Theis said the iron could be higher because of the landfill or road salt.) Only one was classified as a non-naturally occurring “VOC (volatile organic compound)” – 1,4-Dioxane.
Bob Maiorana who lives on the street said he and neighbors were alarmed by the detected VOC. Theis confirmed he assumes that it leaked from the landfill. Maiorana pointed out that the neighborhood was never connected to Town water and relies on wells. He worried that the landfill cap may be degrading and abutters will now have to begin paying to test for VOCs which can be expensive. He has been asking officials if the Town should be doing something for them. He also wondered if the plans for the building project could increase the possibility of cap leaks and have any impact on the safety of the groundwater.
Theis that was unlikely since the project is on the “other side” of a stream and wetlands.
Earlier in the presentation, DPW Superintended Bill Cundiff described the stream as a “hydraulic barrier”. And while conservation buffers would have made building the school over on the fields difficult, for the current (and planned future) spot, Davis described the stream and wetlands as “our friend”:
All the flows from the landfill go north and east toward that wetlands and all the ground flows come down into the bottom and then flow off into that wetlands. And it has a really high capacity of catching the water.
Maiorana said he believed the ” the whole notion of having to build a school where you have to test in perpetuity is like nuts”.
Later, Robin Gunderson pointed out that if the town has to continue to test the landfill caps integrity, no matter what abuts it, that’s a cost that will exist no matter what we do with Neary.
During the presentation, Davis described “added protection” that will be able to add under the new Neary foundation — a vapor barrier between the ground and foundation, a system to draw water out from underneath the foundation, and a system to pull out any radon or other gases that that might be there.
The project also includes building an underground water storage area to help ensure that stormwater is retained to flow back out “at its normal rate so we don’t overburden the wetlands”.
Davis also explained in the meeting why the current building site was chosen rather than building on the nearby fields, which would have allowed the current building to remain open during the project. When they conducted boring tests of the soil under the fields, they discovered sandy fill that wasn’t sturdy enough for building on. (The belief is that former wetland area was filled in during the original building project, which predated wetland protection laws.) To build in that area would have required hauling out soil six feet deep and bringing in replacement soil – both expensive and disruptive to the area given the number of trucks that would have been in and out.
In a separate meeting, Malinowski told the public that building over on the fields by Finn School was also impossible. The recreational fields are protected as park lands (due the Town having previously spent Community Preservation Act funds on the facilities for lighting, etc). And, as I noted earlier in this story, the MSBA didn’t allow for consideration of renovating/replacing Finn School.
To include Finn as a possibility, they would have had to withdraw their application and reapply in a future round. Not only would that have delayed the project (and potentially the cost with continued inflation), but acceptance in a future round would be uncertain.
To view the forum with Q&A, click here.
How we got here
The project initially began in 2020 when Town officials wondered whether enrollment projections meant a school could close, especially given the investment it would take to maintain the aging Neary building. There was concern that investing in necessary repairs and maintenance would trigger a need to bring the building up to modern building codes.
When the School Research Subcommittee looked into the potential for closing one school and moving its students to another building, they determined that none of the elementary schools could accommodate that without renovations/additions. And the administration and School Committee agreed that they didn’t believe it was appropriate to move 5th graders into the middle school.
The subcommittee further assessed that Neary was the building that made the most sense for a renovation/addition/new building project. The Town then pursued state support for a project that would reevaluate grades 2-5 and potentially replace Neary School. (At the time, the Town was looking at the possibility of decommissioning Woodward School to use for Town offices and as a Community Center.)
Neary’s renovation and addition costs were projected to be higher than a new building, ruling out that option. The Committee decided that investing in a four grade school was more cost effective than just replacing Neary with a two grade school, because it also provided the educational benefits of housing grades 2-5 together.
That is the version that they submitted to MSBA for a project, and the version supported by the MSBA. The choice voters now have is yes or no on funding that specific project.
Again, for the NBC’s website with FAQs and more, click here. For more coverage (and related letters to the editor), click here.
- The lower figure cited in MSBA’s press release was based on the also lower estimated total project cost without contingencies. A letter to the Town (here) confirmed the higher figure will be covered if needed. (If it isn’t needed, Southborough’s costs will also be lower.)
- According to the NBC’s RFS for Designer Services, “Asbestos containing building materials are present in the form of pipe fittings, vinyl asbestos tile flooring throughout the majority of the facility, and 12×12 acoustic wall tile in classrooms.”
