School district sets Nov. 2 vote on ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ $59.5 million bond
September 16, 2021 | By Lisa ScagliottiIt’s official: the Harwood Unified Union School District will hold a special election Nov. 2 on a $59.5 million bond to finance the first major construction project since the district’s six communities merged five years ago.
At their meeting Wednesday night, school board members described the undertaking as “once-in-a-lifetime” and a “generational” project to renovate and update the 56-year-old Harwood Union High School and expand Crossett Brook Middle School, which opened in 1997.
“This is an investment that has no parallel in memory here,” board Vice Chair Tim Jones of Fayston said.
Work would include adding a new gymnasium to the high school and replacing its outdated track and field facility. A new wing at the middle school would accommodate seventh and eighth graders now at Harwood Middle School, which would then be closed.
The price tag amounts to a third more than the school district’s typical annual budget and would be the first major construction since the communities of Waterbury, Duxbury, Waitsfield, Warren, Fayston and Moretown formed the unified school district in 2016. Prior to that they shared a high school but ran separate elementary school districts.
With its signature upward-curved roofline, Harwood Union High School was built and opened in 1965 with some renovations in the late 1990s. The proposed bond would invest over $53 million in the facility. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Four categories, one package
The work outlined in the architect’s project presentation is divided into four categories:
Compliance and repairs to the high school: $22 million. Covers replacing the roof, ventilation, heating and cooling systems, electrical, plumbing, communications and security infrastructure. It would address bringing up to modern codes or standards areas such as the science labs, vehicle storage, and stormwater features on site.
Efficiencies and upgrades to the high school: $14.3 million. Covers replacing old windows, lighting, insulation, etc. to save energy and making the building more efficient. Also would eliminate rented spaces in the district to consolidate operations at the high school campus.
Educational alignment at the high school: $17.2 million. This would rebuild to add windows to classrooms and offices that presently have no natural light; science labs would be expanded and better ventilated; classrooms would be aligned into subject areas such as STEM, humanities and a ninth-grade pod. Redesigned space would allow for groups to meet and collaborate. This includes a new gym for $5.7 million and rebuilding the outdated gravel track for $2.88 million.
Middle school expansion at Crossett Brook: $6 million. Key to this entire proposal is the merger of seventh and eighth grades at Crossett to free up space at the Harwood facility. Adding approximately 100 students will require more classrooms and associated spaces.
Discussion on Wednesday night resulted in the school board agreeing to put the entire package to voters in one question seeking a 20-year bond to invest $53.5 million in the high school renovations and $6 million for the Crossett Brook expansion.
Ballot question strategy
The board briefly considered presenting voters with multiple questions that would have separated out the new Harwood gymnasium for $5.7 million and $2.9 million for the track. But after hearing legal advice and some discussion, the group quickly determined that multiple questions could be problematic – a large question could fail while smaller pieces could pass, for example. Most agreed that multiple questions would be both difficult to draft and potentially confusing to voters.
Waterbury representative Caitlin Hollister summed up the situation sharing her rationale behind supporting posing one question on the ballot for the entire project. The athletic facilities are needed, she said, and a piecemeal approach could doom the whole effort.
“We have heard from others who have done bonds around the state that separate questions are less likely to pass than one together,” Hollister said. “I’m willing to entertain other options if our first time around doesn’t work. I haven’t wanted to talk about that too much, but I think it is the reality when you look at the last 10 years in Vermont how bonds go. Some pass the first time around, a lot don’t.”
This request should present the entire package that the design team has assembled, Hollister said, and “explain it, answer questions, sell it as best we can. Get it out to our voters and after November 2 we deal with what’s next – and that may be a second bond… I hope not.”
Jonathan Clough of Warren called asking just one question “the cleanest approach” to the ballot. “What I really want most is for the whole bond to pass,” he said, adding that making the request in multiple questions could be something the board explores if another vote is needed.
A few voices disagreed. “I would only support the three questions,” said Moretown representative Kristen Rodgers, who took a view opposite Hollister’s. “I’m extremely concerned that the total price tag would cause people to vote against it. I know the high school needs the work badly. I did the tour and I get it.” She also noted the district’s commitment to combining the middle schools.
Although “we need it all,” Rodgers said, she preferred giving voters the option to vote on the key pieces separately. “We are in times of covid recovery where people are recovering financially. I would hate to see it fail,” she said. “lf we separate it out and the gym and track pass, that’s awesome. But I really want to see the high school be fixed and the [expansion] done to Crossett Brook.”
Theresa Membrino of Fayston suggested that the track project not be included in the bond since it’s located apart from the high school building. “It could be done almost any time” rather than be included in a 20-year bond, she said.
Voting can begin in October
The one-question approach prevailed in a 10-3 vote with Rodgers, Membrino and Jonathan Young of Warren opposed. Waterbury representative Scott Culver was absent from the meeting.
The board then debated the exact dollar value for the bond, voting 10-3 against rounding the architect’s cost estimate up to $59.6 million. The group unanimously agreed to use the specific amount of the estimate – $59,545,312 – on the ballot.
The vote to approve the election warning for Nov. 2 then passed 11-1. Waterbury board member Marlena Tucker Fishman left the meeting early, missing this vote; Rodgers cast the only no.
The board has laid out plans for community engagement to explain and promote the bond. It set a public informational meeting for 6 p.m. on Oct. 27, as required by state law within 10 days of a vote. Additional meetings via video conference leading up to the vote will be scheduled and other efforts include a video being produced now and expected in early October, according to board Chair Torrey Smith. She said voters also will receive information in the mail announcing the vote and where to find details about the projects.
Early voting will be available with ballots available by request from each town clerk’s office starting Oct. 13, according to the warning. Ballots will not be automatically mailed to voters as was the case in the November 2020 general election due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The board voted unanimously to approve spending up to $15,000 for printing and mailing costs for ballots and other election-related materials.
Property taxes: Factoring in savings
One conversation in the meeting focused on a spreadsheet detailing the property tax implications of the bond assembled by Smith and Finance Manager Michelle Baker.
Previous presentations noted that a $60 million bond would require annual payments by the district of about $3.5 million on average resulting in a 10% increase in property taxes.
Smith said a constituent asked about purported savings from closing Harwood Middle School. “We’ve been talking only about the costs, and not incorporating the savings into that,” she told the board.
Smith and Baker generated calculations that incorporate $600,000 in annual savings from the middle school merger, energy efficiency improvements, and moving district operations out of leased space. That brings the annual bond payment down to $2.96 million which would mean an 8.5% overall property tax increase, they found.
The resulting annual tax impacts on various properties over the 20-year life of the bond would average out to about $362 on a home valued at $250,000; $506 on a $350,000 home; $723 on a home valued at $500,000. (Those calculations before factoring in project savings were $437, $611, and $873, respectively.)
PCB testing will wait
The board on Wednesday spent a few minutes on a topic germane to the Harwood renovations: testing the building for contamination from PCBs, short for polychlorinated biphenyls. Banned from use in the U.S. in 1978, the harmful chemicals were used in a variety of building materials and could be present in the high school.
Last year, high levels of PCB contamination were found at Burlington High School prior to that school district launching a $70 million renovation effort on that facility which also was built in the mid-1960s. That halted the project and the Burlington district closed the school. The city is now using the former Macy’s department store in downtown Burlington for its high school with a goal of having a new permanent facility by 2025.
The Harwood board on Sept. 8 discussed the topic with Facilities Manager Ray Daigle who shared a proposal from ATC Group Services, a part of Atlas Environmental Sampling in Williston. The firm contracts to tests for PCB contamination and other environmental hazards. The proposal described types of testing and approximate costs associated with both asbestos and PCB testing for the Harwood project. The asbestos testing was quoted at $5,850.
PCB testing was broken into two categories – testing bulk materials such as window caulking, paints and mastics, and air testing. The materials piece was quoted at $8,630 and noted that if significant contamination was found, additional sampling would be required at a cost to be determined.
Given the Burlington High School situation, the state legislature earlier this year called for testing Vermont schools built before 1980 for PCB contamination. Legislation appropriated $4.5 million to pay for air testing. “The defined scope of this state funded mandate has not been defined by the [Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation] at this time,” the Atlas contractors wrote in their proposal dated July 29.
Atlas listed two categories of air sampling: a “screening” sampling for $6,000 and a “representative” sampling at $19,945.
In a memo to the board linked in the superintendent’s board report for Wednesday’s meeting, Daigle noted the tight timeline for any testing to happen before the bond vote.
Board Vice Chair Tim Jones told the board on Wednesday that he followed up with ATC Branch Manager Tom Broido with questions. Jones pointed out that the project budget contains $200,000 for environmental testing to be done before any demolition and construction would occur. He suggested further discussions with the project designers to determine if that is adequate and possibly some materials testing to help make that decision.
Jones called Burlington “the most extreme example.” He said he understands from discussions with the project contractors that the state is still working on its plan for air testing in schools.
“The state is working on creating guidance or a threshold by which the air sampling which they would sponsor,” he said. “I suspect the program would then have some prescriptive path forward.”
Jones cautioned that doing air testing before the state program launches could be costly. “We certainly wouldn’t get our money back,” he said. “It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to do the air sampling right now.”
Jones said one question the board should consider is “how much money do you want to spend upfront for a greater level of certainty?” Jones said additional discussions were needed with the project architect and construction consultant to determine if the $200,000 set aside for testing is adequate and how to determine if that should change.
Both Jones and Daigle last week noted that if testing revealed significant contamination, state and federal regulators would become involved. “If we find something, it’s not really in our control anymore,” he said. “At this point, I’m inclined to trust the professionals that we’ve hired to evaluate the risk.”
There were no questions or comments from other board members. “We’ll stay the course and keep getting feedback from our contractors,” Smith said. “We can always change direction if we need to.”
The school board’s meetings are recorded and available to watch on Mad River TV or the district’s YouTube channel. The board packets for the Sept. 8 and Sept. 15 meetings contain links to much of the background material regarding the bond proposal.