School Dept. announces final building plans
Published on January 9th, 2002
STONEHAM, MA - The School Department this week announced the final time line for completion of the elementary school building project.
The construction contract for the new Robin Hood School went out to bid on Dec. 18. Contractors walked through the site on Jan. 4. Robin Hood bids will be opened on Feb. 5. The fourth and final school building, Colonial Park, goes out to bid on Jan. 16. The bids will be opened on Feb. 26. An article at the March 4 Special Town Meeting — called by Selectmen this week — will ask citizens to appropriate no more than $6.5 million to complete the project. Sense will be made of these dollars below.
“Both construction projects should be executed and signed by March 15,” said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Joseph Connelly.
The School Department believes construction must begin by April 1, 2002, to be on track for a September 2003 opening. (To secure 63 percent state funding a shovel must be in the ground by June 30.)
Duncan McClellan, principal owner of Flansburgh Associates Architects of Boston, the project architects, estimates 16 months from execution of the contract to completion of the work. If he’s right, both schools will be built by July 15, 2003.
However, several hurdles remain before children can run through the new schoolyards.
Drainage problems exist on the Robin Hood site and in the surrounding neighborhood. Studies by Flansburgh engineers and by Stoneham Public Works have shown that $500,000 worth of work done before the school is built could solve drainage problems for the whole neighborhood. But Connelly said if the work is not done prior to school construction, the schools will spend around $350,000 on a drainage system. The schools must keep costs down, but this cheaper alternative won’t give any relief to the surrounding roads.
“I hope the town gets the work done,” Connelly said.
Regardless, with all the trouble the building project has faced thus far, contingency money is part of the remaining budget. But, the schools cannot afford to protect against everything.
“If we find soil unsuitable for a foundation and need fill like we did at South, it’s built into the cost, but if we run into something like Central (arsenic contamination), we’re in trouble,” Connelly said. People should note that neither Robin Hood nor Colonial Park are near a chemical plant or railroad tracks, the hobgoblins of the Central School site. (The School Department fought to get extra help from the state to cover part of the clean-up costs.)
The only other hurdle is at the starting line; Town Meeting must approve the money. If not, the project would have to be scaled back and a fourth school would be unlikely. But Connelly wants to think positive.
“Between now and March 4 we have to get the message to the townspeople to say why we need this money,” Connelly said.
Dollars and sense
Part of what Connelly hopes Stoneham citizens will believe has already been accepted by the state Department of Revenue (DOR): inflation, not expansion increased the building project cost.
DOR Tax Bureau Chief Bruce Stanford told Connelly that because the scope of the project has not changed the Stoneham schools can ask Town Meeting to appropriate $6.5 million more to go under the original debt exclusion without another townwide ballot vote. A townwide vote in December 1997 approved placing $39.5 million — appropriated at the October 1997 Town Meeting to pay for four schools — under a debt exclusion from the Proposition 2 1/2 property tax cap.
A written letter to the town of Stoneham from DOR saying inflation not a change in scope drove the cost increase and OKing the addition to the debt exclusion is in the mail.
Connelly said the schools will ask for only what they need to complete the project. After the Robin Hood and Colonial Park contracts are executed, the schools will have this figure. Flansburgh estimates are closer to $6 than $6.5 million.
To date Stoneham has been borrowing short term to fund the project, but after all the schools are complete, these short term debts will be covered by taking one large long term bond to be paid back over 20 years. Until the bond is paid off, the payments will be funded outside the limits of Prop 2 1/2.
The school building project has been time sensitive from the start because the School Building Assistance Bureau (SBAB) reimburses 63 percent of construction costs only if construction begins within a year of project approval.
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