Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

 

Town Action Needed

 

 

     The January 10, 2017 Times Record contained articles describing issues that bear careful attention. First, "Town (Brunswick) Faces Tough Choices Over Fate of Aging Schools". Next, "Democrats Skeptical, Republicans Supportive of Gov. LePage's Budget".

  

     The town of Brunswick has a history of procrastinating when having to make difficult choices. By procrastination, I don't mean the time to carefully research and consider all options, in a  reasonable number of public meetings for all citizens to hear the facts, research, options considered and recommendations from town staff and Town Council, School Board, and other advisory groups. It is just plain hard for this town to make a decision and then implement it. There are many divergent viewpoints, people now forming groups, all wanting their way, with little room for compromise. Washington is not the only place where things drag out, resulting in unnecessary cost inflation to the taxpayers. Our 'beautifully balanced' town of Brunswick is home to projects that cost more than they should due to delay, masked as citizen participation and transparency. At some point, decisions have to be made and forward movement is necessary.

    The headline, "Town Faces Tough Choices Over Fate of Aging Schools" implies that work still needs to be done to arrive at a course of action to address two of our aging public schools. In fact, the School Board has spent considerable dedicated time in public meetings discussing the research, data collected, many options. After many starts and re-starts, the School Board came to a consensus recommendation and presented it to the Town Council. The recommendation to the Town Council  included a repair and renovation bond project to address major facilities deficiencies in two schools. Additionally, the School Department applied for, and received, Revolving Renovation monies from the state to address the most serious deficiencies in these two schools. Here's the link to the Brunswick School Department's facilities planning activities dating back to 2011: http://www.brunswick.k.12.me.us/facilities-study/  The Town Council rejected the School Board's first repair/renovate recommendation, indicating the School Board should re-evaluate and return with a recommendation that included building a new school. Some councilors' statements, "Go big or go home", "if we are going to spend that much just to repair, we should build new to get the best use of our money invested" were made. Another year passed where the School Board engaged in more architectural studies, with a careful eye kept on managing the cost of a new school. Again, the School Board met in public, discussed and debated the merits of additional options and arrived at a recommendation for a new elementary school to be built and repair/renovations to be made at the Junior High School. Town Councilors followed School Board deliberations, some even attending the meetings. The School Superintendent and the Town Manager stayed in close contact, meeting regularly and sharing information. When this second recommendation was presented to the Town Council, the brakes screeched loudly. The very same 9 Councilors are now saying more time is needed to study the financial implications of the recommendation and implying, perhaps, the School Board need to go back to the 'drawing board'.  The town's Finance Department has also studied the proposals and cost. The town's Finance Director and the school department's Finance Manager shared information and numerous models of tax impact were developed and publicly discussed. Yes, this will be expensive. It is a given. What more is needed?  We can argue about the pros and cons of the proposals. To what end? For how long?

 

This is the point at which a decision needs to be made. The schools need action. We need to send this to the citizens for either an approval or denial. Either we invest to build a new elementary school/ repair the Junior High or we invest to make major repairs/renovations to these two schools. Waiting will only increase the cost of whatever course of action taken to address the facilities deficiencies in these two buildings. Waiting to see if Brunswick schools will climb to the top of a statewide application for construction of a new school is a long shot, at best. Waiting will only increase the chance that a facilities mishap occurs and shuts down one or both of these schools and an emergency plan will have to be enacted. Think....double sessions of school; moving 5th graders into the junior high school where there is room even though the building is in need of repair; moving some of the junior high classes to the "new" high school (which is 20 years old!); leasing other space to hold classes; buying enough modular classrooms to accommodate however many classes might be displaced if a facilities mishap occurs. All of these less expensive, but still costly, options were considered but rejected.

 

My next upcoming post will be dedicated to the state's budget proposal, particularly education, health, and welfare.  Local agreements, local control should be pretty easy compared to coming to statewide agreement on proposals that will substantively change public education. Let's start by quickly finding common ground to move forward on our local schools issues and then coalesce around protecting public education.