4 March, 2011
On February 9th, 2011 the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), the agency that funds school construction, approved a new PreK – 5 elementary school at Fruit Street. To seek funding for this project, residents will be asked to appropriate funding at a Special Town Meeting (STM) on March 21, 2011 at 7:00 pm in the High School Athletic Center. If the warrant passes at STM, then the funding must be further approved at a special election on March 28, 2011, 7:00 am – 8:00 pm in the Middle School Brown Gym. The MSBA requires that the full amount of the project, not the net cost, be voted on at both the Special Town Meeting and at the ballot. The Hopkinton Elementary School Building Committee (HESBC) will oversee the construction and all spending on the project.
Hopkinton residents will be asked to appropriate $38,037,918 for the Construction Phase of the project. The MSBA will provide a grant of $14,673,527, which will result in a net cost of $23,364,391 to the Town.
The estimated cost to the taxpayer will be $53.70 per $100,000 of assessed home value. The average cost for taxpayers will be $253.71 per year, based on the average home value of $472,457. There will be no tax impact in FY12, and the tax levy would begin in FY13. This amount is based on borrowing for 25 years.
The MSBA has established a reimbursement rate of 44.7% of eligible costs for this project. The formula starts with a base amount, adds a factor for the Property Wealth of the town and then adds incentive points. Hopkinton earned 4.86 incentive points, which included 1.86 points out of 2.00 for maintenance of our existing facilities, 2 out of 2 points for building a green school, and 1 additional point for using Construction at Risk Management method of project oversight.
In determining the grant amount, the MSBA also identified expenses that were not eligible for reimbursement. In particular, the MSBA has limits on site development expenses. Because Fruit Street is an undeveloped site, these expenses were higher than if we were building on a site with infrastructure already available at the site like electricity, sewer and water. Project expenses were also increased because of a request by the boards and committees in town that oversee land use activities to expand the infrastructure we were developing to benefit the town in general. A moderate expansion of infrastructure that would benefit the entire Fruit Street property would be cost effective for the Town, even if not reimbursed by the MSBA. For example, the driveway that leads to the school would be widened so that the road could be used as the main access way into the Fruit Street property to avoid potential wetland and well zone complications of the original placement of the entrance to the property.
Many people have expressed concern about trying to pay for a new school during these tough economic times, and have asked if the MSBA will defer the grant. The MSBA has clearly indicated it will not do so. The money for this project has been set aside in the MSBA’s capital funding pipeline since 2007 . However, there are many other districts in the state waiting for funding for building projects. If Hopkinton does not continue along the timeline laid out by the MSBA, the MSBA will offer that money to the next district in line. In order to seek money from the MSBA at a later date, a new project would need to be started from square one, and there is no guarantee that the MSBA would consider our project. The time involved in undertaking that process again in the future would not only add interim maintenance costs to the current Center School, it would also result in a potential project with higher construction costs, lesser reimbursement from the MSBA and, therefore, greater costs to the Town.
There is a cost benefit to building the school now. The current economy is favorable for getting low construction bids. For recent projects in other towns, the MSBA has been seeing bids come in considerably less than anticipated. This is the reason the MSBA has asked the Town to hold a Special Town Meeting in March, so that Hopkinton can also reap the benefits of this favorable bidding climate.
Hopkinton has an opportunity right now to build a much needed school with a considerable portion of the cost paid for by the state. The current grant available to fund a new PreK-5 neighborhood school on Fruit Street has been determined by the Hopkinton Elementary School Building Committee, the School Committee, and the MSBA to be the most cost effective and educationally appropriate solution to address the condition of the Center School.
