[B]urlingtonians will have the opportunity to vote on a $70 million bond for renovation of Burlington High School after the City Council adopted a motion late Monday to put the issue on the November ballot.
Approval came on an 11-1 vote, with council president Kurt Wright, R-Ward 1, the lone dissenter. He said that while everyone on the council agrees with the need for a new high school, he thought the process was rushed.
“I simply believe more public input was needed and would have been useful,” he said.
The council first unanimously approved a new policy setting a limit on how much debt the city can take on. The policy sets the capacity for outstanding overlapping debt at the level to retain its current A rating level from Moody’s.
The debt issue led to the cancellation of a meeting earlier this month as Mayor Miro Weinberger and others expressed concerns.
The high school was built in 1964 and renovation proponents say the current building is outdated and is not adequately accessible for students with disabilities. The plan calls for a major expansion of the school’s main building and the complete demolition of a handful of other buildings.
The city’s debt, which is around $80 million, is projected to increase to a just over $195 million in 2024 before leveling off and decreasing to $183 million in 2028, the last year the projection covers. About one third of this debt allocation would be tied up in the BHS renovation project.
The city’s credit rating fell when the city improperly used millions in taxpayer funding to keep city-run telephone, television and internet service provider Burlington Telecom running. But it improved to an “A” in 2016, a rating the city wants to keep.
Weinberger said the debt limit should give residents confidence that the city is keeping a focus on keeping tax increases down while addressing key infrastructure projects, such as renovations to the high school, the stormwater and wastewater system, and Memorial Auditorium.
“I hope that this policy will give voters the ability to say yes to these investments without fear that there is no limit to what they are going to be asked to do in the future,” he said. “They can now look out over a 10-year period of time and understand essentially the maximum they are going to be asked to invest in, and I hope that will give people some confidence moving forward.”
The city predicts that if it approaches the limits set under the new debt policy, the increase in municipal tax attributable to debt from new projects from 2019 to 2028 will be $246 for a Burlington household valued at $250,000. The estimated increase of the BHS project debt on the education tax will be about $302 for that hypothetical household from 2019 to 2028.
The school board and the City Council both approved a memorandum of understanding Monday night. While the school board retains responsibility for the project, the city will have substantial oversight over it.
The memorandum creates a BHS Building Construction Oversight Committee featuring two school commissioners, three school district staff members, the project manager, three community representatives and one city representative.
The Board of Finance will have to approve the contract of the project manager who is selected and the full draft of the design documents. It also will review the full draft of the design development budget and material changes of $250,000 or more to that budget before those go to the school board.
Weinberger said that the high school project was going to be one of the largest in the history of the city and take years. He said the memorandum was a final piece that he needed to be fully confident in the proposal, and that laying out how the school district would work with the city on the project would enhance the building process.
Superintendent Yaw Obeng said that the memorandum could set an example for how the city and school district can work more closely.
“This is a significant milestone for Burlington and I think it could be a good example for the rest of Vermont in terms of how to move forward,” he said.
Nearly every council member spoke of the pressing need to renovate the high school and get the issue in front of voters in November.
Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, said he was “shocked by the inadequacy of the building” during his tour of the school. He said in the age of school shootings, the lack of safety protections in the school was particularly jarring.
“There are all these access control issues in this context that are frightening to me,” he said. “That is something, again, like the accessibility issue, that absolutely has to be dealt with.”
For example, classroom doors at the school can only be locked from the outside.
Joan Shannon, D-South District, said that while she was not immediately on board with the renovation proposal, she believed the new debt policy and the memorandum of understanding have gotten the city closer to having a plan the public can be confident in.
“I also don’t think the public at large is necessarily there yet,” she said. “There’s a lot of work to be done. While we’ve had our questions answered, and I think most of the questions out there have really good answers, the public doesn’t have them yet.”
School Board Chair Clare Wool said the board was committed to informing voters through community outreach in the upcoming months.
The City Council also approved putting the $30 million wastewater plan on the ballot in November in a 10-1 vote.
