By Alice Waugh
Four town boards have unanimously recommended that residents authorize the town to apply again to the state for funding for a comprehensive school project.
The Board of Selectmen and the Finance, School, and Capital Planning Committees unanimously voted earlier this week to recommend a “yes” vote on Article 28 at Town Meeting on Saturday. A “yes” vote would authorize the town to apply for funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) for a comprehensive renovation of the Lincoln School.
In December 2015, the MSBA informed Lincoln officials that the town would not be invited into the funding process for 2016. The application deadline for next year’s funding is in April.
This was the second time that the MSBA has turned down Lincoln’s request. Several years ago, the state approved a $21 million grant for a Lincoln project estimated to cost a total of $49 million, but the project failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority from residents at Town Meeting in 2012. The town also applied in 2013 but did not get invited into the funding process.
“This is a little bit like [the movie] ‘Groundhog Day’,” School Committee chair Jennifer Glass said at a March 14 Board of Selectmen meeting, noting that residents at Town Meeting a year ago voters overwhelmingly to try for new MSBA funding.
The 2015 funding requests from Massachusetts cities and towns included several from school districts with “very severe needs,” Glass said. “There were a number of districts threatened with overcrowding or loss of accreditation due to conditions.”
In discussions with the MSBA after the latest denial, Glass said the agency “understood we had done a lot of work as a town to build consensus and understand what went wrong in 2012.”
If Article 28 is not approved, residents will vote on Article 29, which authorizes spending a previously appropriated $750,000 on a feasibility study for a school project to be funded entirely by the town. The article notes that a project that meets long-range facilities needs and includes educational enhancements will likely require a minimum town investment of $30 million.
“We fully believe that, to achieve a project to meet our educational goals and is fiscally responsible to the town, we must work with the state,” Glass said.
Concerns over rising costs
However, even if voters pass Article 28, “I’m starting to really worry there’ll be a way in which some people in town will think we’re kicking the can and that people will begin to say, ‘OK, if we don’t get the state money, I’m not going to think about what that means or what we need to do,” said Finance Committee member Eric Harris.
Interest rates and construction costs are rising, “and I think $30 million is probably no longer a good estimate of what it will be a year from now” in terms of the minimum cost to the town, with or without MSBA funding, Harris added. “I don’t know what to do about that, but it worries me a little… two years in Lincoln is a long time,” he said.
It’s also possible that MSBA money will never be forthcoming. “Some of us think the chances of getting state money are about as good as the chances of John Kasich getting the nomination—it’s possible but not likely,” Harris said. “I worry we’re piling up enormous expenses that taxpayers have never really had to confront before… is there a backup plan?”
Officials cautiously optimistic
Others were more optimistic about the chances of getting MSBA money. “I believe that tenacity and commitment with the state can mean something. I think we’ve learned a lot and cleaned up our game,” Eckhouse said.
Selectman Peter Braun echoed that sentiment. “I think at the beginning [of recent discussions with the MSBA], we were concerned that maybe that Lincoln is sort of on the blacklist, but now I think the opposite seemed to be true,” he said. “The ears were wide open and the eyes were wide open.”
The MSBA has been “very open to our requests for conversation,” Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall said. “I think all along have shown that they’re open to accepting Lincoln into the process.”
After Lincoln was turned down in December, MSBA program director Diane Sullivan indicated that this round of funding went to meet the needs of “extremely needy schools this year,” McFall said.
“This may pave some opening way in the coming year for schools that might be at our level of need. [Sullivan] expressed that they understood the [Lincoln] facility’s needs and have an assumption that the needs are the same and probably worse given that time has passed and we we have not addressed them, and they highly encouraged us to reapply,” McFall said.
School officials noted that there are no building problems they know of that must be immediately addressed, and that the town has funded expenditures for crucial repair needs as they came up in recent years.
“If something should arise that would affect the safety or operation of the school, we would ask, even if it had to be reversed later” by new construction, Glass said.