Fall Town Meeting: Neary Roof may (or may not) be on the Warrant

Above: A report on Neary’s roof highlighted issues that include sections that don’t drain and open seams. (images cropped from report)

Last month, the Southborough School Committee submitted an Article for the Special Town Meeting in October. It requests borrowing over $4MM to replace Neary School’s roof.

This week, Select Board members raised the possibility of not including the Article on the Warrant. But in their discussion, they got a key fact wrong.

At their August meeting, School Committee Chair Chelsea Malinowski highlighted that if voters had approved the Neary Building Project this spring, the current building would have closed next June.

That is the time that the committee is now targeting to have the roof replaced. Since engineering needs to be complete before going out to bid, they are seeking funding approval this fall.

The project to tear down Neary and build a new four grade school was scheduled to begin construction the summer of 2026. Students would have been temporarily relocated using mobile units at Finn School and Woodward School for the following two school years.

In previous forums, Superintendent Gregory Martineau explained that when roof issues were raised years ago, the School Committee and administration agreed to take temporary measures to make the roof work until construction could begin. 

In June, the committee asked the administration to investigate the building safety, including what work is needed to keep Neary open since the May votes failed. The answers the administration came back with included a dire need to replace a failing roof.

According to the NSBORO Schools’ administration, their vendor has reported there are no more patches or short term solutions left to further extend the life of the roof. (Scroll down for more on that.)

In Tuesday night’s Select Board meeting, member Al Hamilton appeared to forget the Neary Building Project timeline. Referencing a question from his wife, Hamilton wondered what the committee’s original plans had been for the roof to last for the next couple of years while the project was still in design phase.

Member Kathy Cook (who had served on the Neary Building Committee), corrected him on the timing. But she followed by mistakenly correcting herself. She erroneously recalled that construction would have waited until the summer of 2027.

Hamilton and Cook discussed bringing in the School Committee and the district’s consultant to their next meeting on September 16th. They want to ask questions about how make the roof life last a few years longer.

The looming controversy in asking voters to invest in the roof was summed up by commenter Tim Litt. He highlighted that the roof life was projected to be 40 years, while he didn’t believe that the school had a life beyond five years.

Litt pointed to the Town’s study of what to do with the school buildings. He thought most of the scenarios the PreK-8 Building Committee was looking at would result in closing the school. He followed, that plans for the school will depend on what the committee “comes up with”.

Tim Fling, the Select Board’s representative on the building committee, clarified that the committee won’t be making a proposal. They are just pulling together all of the data so the public and officials can look at it.

The committee’s report isn’t due until the end of September. (That makes it unlikely the Select Board and School Committee will have agreed on a clear gameplan for how to handle the buildings in time to outline for voters at the Special Town Meeting less than 30 days later.)

During the Select Board’s meeting, Cook repeatedly urged keeping potentially controversial Articles of the Warrant. She emphasized the importance of getting voters to pass zoning Articles that to allow Atlantic Management to build a commercial project in the old EMC Industrial Park, bringing in significant revenue for the Town. (Chair Andrew Dennington reassured that those Articles will be first on the Warrant, and was less concerned that other Articles could have an impact.)

Cook noted that the Select Board controls the Warrant, and with the exception of Community Preservation Act Articles, can control what is and isn’t on it. (The exception she didn’t note is Citizen Petition Articles.) That means the School Committee will have to convince the Select Board to include the Article. (This may also be an issue for some of the Planning Board’s additional zoning Articles Cook wondered about tabling.)

During the Neary roof discussion, Fling questioned the estimated cost for replacement. He said that in figures he’d been looking at, the Advisory Committee had estimated the expense as $1.3MM. (I haven’t been able to find the exact cost Fling cited, but here is the Advisory Report that listed $1.58MM on page 11.)

Fling wants to find out where Advisory’s figures came from. His comments highlighted that some “No” votes on the project may have been based on the costs Advisory shared for alternatively repairing Neary for continued use.

Roof Consultant’s Dire Report

The School Committee’s funding request is based on their contractor’s estimate that the roof replacement project will cost $3.5-$4MM, plus $250,000 for engineering. (The draft Article in the Select Board’s packet didn’t specify the figure yet, but Martineau had advised the School Committee to ask for the full capital expense.)

At the August 13th School Committee Meeting, Asst Superintendent of Operations Keith Lavoie expressed confidence in the district’s consultant, who had helped them find “alternatives” in the past to extend school roofs’ lives:

We have used him for for many years on many different projects and he hasn’t steered us in a bad direction. So I thought it was a quality report that we received from him and he also concurred that the roof is in a condition now in which it needs to be replaced. No repair at this point, other than maybe some small repairs, would help us get through. . . a full roof replacement is what’s recommended.

According to Lavoie, the Building Inspector was also concerned about the roof’s condition.

The consultant’s written report states:

This roof has completely failed and there are little options available, other than replacement, that exist for this roof. Close attention should be paid to the areas of lifted insulation because once this happens, it only takes one strong wind storm to cause a catastrophic failure. Water is coming into the roof system from all over and although there are not many leaks present in the building, the water is going somewhere. Indoor air quality risks are high. This building has a tectum roof deck which is highly susceptible to water damage, if deck replacement is needed, your already high budget for this roof will increase exponentially. This roof needs to be replaced ASAP, it is past the point of no return and there are no real options otherwise. Repairs are a waste of money at this point, other than for stop gap or emergency purposes.

Since the Select Board may be looking for “stop gap” measures as official sort out what school building investments to make long term, members may still be interested in hearing more about the “little options available”.

Normally, the administration would try to pursue partial funding from the state through an MSBA Accelerated Repair grant, like they have for the Trottier roof. That wasn’t an option when they were pursuing the full building project with MSBA. But given the urgency for the roof replacement, the administration said there isn’t time to go that route.