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Date: 12/15/2021
SUNDERLAND – Superintendent of Schools Darius Modestow came before the Selectboard last week with a simple message: the town’s capital planning for school repairs and maintenance isn’t working.
“The system we need to address these capital needs is broken right now,” Modestow said. “We’re not going to be able to address these needs, given the current way we do things.”
Selectman David Pierce commented that how the town handles capital expenses does not include school projects the town is responsible for. The school is the largest, most expensive real estate owned by the town, but capital improvements don’t even make it onto the town’s capital spending list.
“We do have a master capital list, but I don’t know if we have the school stuff on it,” Pierce said. “That brings up a valid point. Right now it’s like, oh, that’s a school problem. It’s really our problem. It’s a municipal building just like the one we’re sitting in.”
Modestow came before the Selectboard because the capital needs of the building have exceeded what the School Committee can deal with. Prompted by the committee to summarize the estimated costs, and how much for each project, he provided a spreadsheet listing remediations with three degrees of urgency. Projects were listed as need immediate attention, should be addressed soon, or are bigger projects, such as the roof, that can be delayed, or may be too expensive to complete in one fiscal year.
“I apply for three (projects) every year, I get one. I look at this list, I’m not going to get all the ones in green,” Modestow said. Those projects need immediate attention. “How do we get these things before we start getting ourselves [into] other financial problems?”
The superintendent’s spreadsheet included the rim bands on the outside of the building, woodwork impacted by rot. Replacement of those architectural elements began several years ago, funded at $10,000 per year, and will not be finished this fiscal period. It wasn’t the best strategy to do that task in stages, but the limits of the capital budget made it necessary.
Windows were a second project with a big price tag. Some of the windows survived the collapse of the school’s roof, about 20 years ago, and were not in good condition at that time.
“We got 19-and-a-half years more out of them than we thought we would,” Town Administrator Geoffrey Kravitz said. “The south side, they were marginally okay at that time.”
The School Committee was well represented on the Zoom meeting by Chair Gregory Gottschalk and member Peter Gagarin. Gottschalk commented on another substantial project, replacing the glycol anti-freeze in the sprinkler system, and suggested a solution to the school/town divide in capital planning.
“I understand your idea, to create a comprehensive renovation plan” for both the school and town departments, Gottschalk said. “Whether [or not] we know if we have to replace the glycol every 10 years, if we maintain this list, we’re gonna have this kind of cyclical stuff – so this feels like an improvement over where things have been.”
Gagarin, on the School Committee, is also on the Capital Planning Committee. He concurred with the superintendent that the current system of appropriations is not sufficient. He said the town has banked money for capital repairs, sourced through a debt exclusion, but at this point the fund balance is only $120,000.
“If all we’re doing is knocking off the top 30 or 40 thousand per year,” Gagarin said, “that list is just going to get longer and longer, and more problems will crop up.”
Modestow also mentioned the need for a new dishwasher, that a gable end has wood rot, ceiling trim needs to be replaced, it’s time to lay new carpets, and some areas require a coat of paint. Another possible large expenditure may be fitting out the gymnasium for air conditioning. Air conditioning is a desirable upgrade because the gym is sometimes used for large town gatherings and becomes uncomfortably warm.
Discussion turned to funding the many capital projects at the school. Kravitz recommended aggregating them, rather than seeking Town Meeting approval time after time.
“If you keep coming back, every year, and ask for another $50,000 for this or $30,000 for that, it’s much harder than to try to do the stuff all together and say, Okay, this is what we need,” Kravitz said. “I’d rather do it that way ... [And] if we have to borrow $250,000 to make that happen, then we can do that, and do it once, instead of keep coming back.”
Kravitz reassured the board that the town is in a good position to assume new debt for repairs.
“Right now, we’ve expired a lot of our debt [so] the windows would be an excellent idea,” Kravitz said. “But personally, I wonder about looking at the school, that’s now 25, 27 years old. Doing upgrades to it probably makes a lot of sense.”
Modestow also clarified how the unworkable divide between town and school capital expenditures manifested in his budgetary process. The age and history of the structure, built in 1990, are also forcing more attention to be brought to upkeep and deferred maintenance.
“The first 10 years they’re small numbers, $10,000 or $20,000,” Modestow said. “But now we’re in a 25-year-old building, those figures go up ... [and] we didn’t build the budget with the capital budget built in.”
The Selectboard later in the meeting made a first move toward addressing the future cost increases for maintaining the school building. The board voted unanimously to increase the capital assessment to taxpayers by 2.5 percent, the maximum allowed, according to Kravitz. The capital assessment will increase from $118,869 to $121,840, a bump just under $3,000.
Kravitz emphasized the town administration will maintain the school building for the continued use by residents. He said, “We’re going to work hard to understand their needs and figure out a way to fund them.”