Officials are working towards holding another Special Town Meeting on spending on Southborough school buildings. But this time, there will be big differences.
The Select Board and School Committee are targeting spring for a meeting that will focus on Feasibility Studies and Schematic Plans. They will ask for funding that work for multiple potential school building/renovation project(s).
One of the complaints opponents to the New Neary Project voiced last spring was the belief that the Town hadn’t fully explored more cost-effective options. The goal is to come up with accurate project costs and vetted details. That would allow presenting “apples to apples” comparisons when they ask voters at a subsequent Town Meeting to choose which building project to fund.
The rough plan was agreed upon at a joint meeting last week of the Select Board, School Committee, and CIPC (Capital Improvement & Planning Committee), with two members of the Advisory Committee. The four committees plan to meet again on Tuesday, December 9th to work out more details.
The main detail they plan to tackle next is which options to ask voters to fund researching.
Early in the meeting, Superintendent Gregory Martineau described options that the School Committee could support exploring.
- Full renovation of Neary: grades remain Finn PreK-1, Woodward 2-3, Neary 4-5, Trottier 6-8
- Finn expansion (and close Neary): Finn PreK-3, Woodward 4-5, Trottier 6-8
- New four-grade school (“New Neary Project” that failed): Not specified, but presumably Finn closes and Woodward is 4-5, Trottier 6-8
- New PreK-5 school (site unspecified), Trottier 6-8
The descriptions lined up with four of the options that the PK-8 SBC (PreK-8 School Building Committee) looked at this summer, but in a different order. (To help readers who want to look back at the committee’s reports and documents, the table right explains which options align.)
This time, the Town will forego seeking a state grant to share the cost — at least for this phase of the work. That will allow the Town more flexibility to explore options. It also allows them to move more quickly. And given the state of the Neary Building, officials agree on urgency of figuring out the path forward.
During the meeting, CIPC Chair Jason Malinowski said the school building decision is “borderline paralyzing all of the capital needs of every town department in this town”. (That’s in part because of the money it would tie up for taxpayers. But it’s also because of the potential domino impacts on municipal buildings and properties if a school is closed and the building or property is repurposed or sold.)
The School Committee also plans to seek funding at the Annual Town Meeting this spring for an expensive roof repair project at Neary. Getting voter support when the future plans for the school are completely in the air is also a challenge the Town needs to deal with.
Over the summer, the PreK-8 School Building Committee pulled together a matrix to try to give the public and officials Apples-to-Apples data on the project. But many of the figures used as cost estimates were very rough estimates or based on past “placeholder” estimates. Jason Malinowski (who is also the former Chair of the Neary Building Committee), said that it was time to stop the “Amateur Hour” and invest in getting real figures. The room appeared to be in consensus on that.
Member Tim Fling floated using a survey to narrow down choices, then use the next Annual Town Meeting to deal with the funding request. Others argued that the interest level and the importance required its own meeting. Tonight, the Select Board will discuss a date for holding a dedicated Special Town Meeting in the spring.
There was some talk of presenting at least three options for voters to choose to fund all of them, or only some. But some officials seemed to believe only the first two were viable.
Select Board Member Kathy Cook posited that they would be able to cover spending a couple million for the Schematic Design work without seeking a loan. If so, only a simple majority of voters will need to approve the spend.
The much higher bar comes in a future phase. During last Wednesday’s meeting, there was a lot of discussion about information still needed and past mistakes to avoid repeating.
Jason Malinowski and Select Board Member Al Hamilton highlighted the need to find out if voters are even willing to consider a school on the Neary site. Some opponents voiced environmental worries. It’s unclear how many, and how much that would impact the 2/3 approval needed to borrow for a building project.
Advisory’s Marci Jones and Erik Glaser spoke about voters’ concerns that some projects don’t make enough use of existing classroom space. School Committee Chair Chelsea Malinowski pointed out the work done this summer to detail what educational needs would be impacted by some of the building project suggestions. (You can read about that here.) She suggested that Jones sit down with someone in the administration to go through it.
Select Board Vice Chair Marguerite Landry opined that the issue of working and studying in the current Neary Building, which has no windows in the library, got “a little lost” in the discussion. She believed that they need to pitch to parents the benefits of a “great school for a good experience”.
She worried about how to educate voters being asked to make choices “wisely, as opposed to ‘What was the cheapest?’ or “Not in my neighborhood'”.
School Committee Roger Challen expressed his dismay that based on the boos he received talking about the projects’ educational benefits, he believed voters didn’t care about that aspect. [Editor’s Note: I believe he misread the reaction in the room. Many I spoke to were angered by the idea that the expensive new building was the only solution to addressing the Town’s educational needs.]
Challen opined that the “big mistake” was the “pipe dream” some voters had that the Town could avoid spending money:
And the reality is we probably should have done a better job of saying, “Look the alternatives to this project ultimately are going to cost you more money. Because taxes are going up folks, right? it’s just a question of what they’re going to be spent on.”
No agenda has been posted yet for the December 9th meeting. Since the Select Board will be hosting, it’s likely to be held as a hybrid meeting in either the Public Safety Building or the Town House Hearing Room that evening.
