Updated at 10:37 p.m.
Voters in Burlington approved a $165 million bond measure on Tuesday by a large margin, allowing construction of a new high school to begin.
According to preliminary results from the city’s eight wards, 76% of voters backed the ballot measure.
Burlington superintendent Tom Flanagan called the outcome “a real clear sign for us that we’re doing the right work.” Despite the resounding victory, Flanagan said that district officials “want to work on bringing that cost down.”
The Burlington School District touted the bond vote as essential to building a permanent home for Burlington High School on Institute Road.
But with tax implications showing that property owners and residents will be paying off the borrowed money until the year 2046, some in the city balked at the tax burden.
Flanagan said the district plans to put out a request for quotes to subcontractors Wednesday, and he expects demolition to begin by January.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger called the vote results “decisive.”
“I think the fact that this vote took place amid really uncertain financial times really speaks to how strongly Burlingtonians believe in education and what a great job the school district did on addressing all the questions that there were about this vote,” Weinberger said in an interview.
Weinberger also said the city will now have to work to “make good on the commitment we made to voters to do everything we can over the next three years as the project's being designed and built to bring down the cost of the project.”
The $165 million bond will pay for the majority of the new high school project, estimated to cost a total of around $190 million. A breakdown of estimated project costs shared by the school district outlined $134 million in construction expenses, $34 million in other project costs and $21 million for environmental remediation.
School board chair Clare Wool thanked voters Tuesday night and said, “My commitment to the citizens of Burlington tonight is that we cannot shoulder this burden alone. And we are looking to our state leaders and our governor to pay for this toxic cleanup and to help us.” In a statement, she called on the state to give $32 million that has been earmarked for such projects. “We are the only school that has been shut down by the state health department and we need the state’s help,” Wool said.
At a South End polling place on Tuesday, Andrew Jope, 53, said it wasn’t an ideal time to build a new high school, given high construction costs. Even so, Jope, who works in education, voted for the bond. Students have “done a great job adjusting to the situation and they're making the best of it. But, you know, we need a permanent high school,” he said. “I share concerns about the cost, but there's just no way around that. We have to build it.”
Voters previously approved a $70 million bond to renovate the high school building in 2018. Environmental tests done during the planning process for that project revealed levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a hazardous chemical, that exceeded EPA limits.
School officials closed the school in 2020, and the district returned or didn’t end up borrowing most of the 2018 bond as a result. Since then, students have been taking classes in the vacant former Macy’s building downtown.
The lease at the former department store is set to expire in 2025, a fact district officials used to urge voters to pass the bond. However, the building’s owner, developer Don Sinex, said he would “consider” an extension if the school wasn’t built and students had nowhere else to go.
The tax implications shared by the school district assume it will borrow the full bond amount. But in interviews leading up to the vote, district officials sought to draw attention to their efforts to reduce the borrowed amount.
Wool said the district has pursued 17 different funding options, from state and federal grants to private philanthropy, she said.
“Every time we are successful in raising funds it means we lower the burden this project has on taxpayers,” Wool said during a press conference.
At that Oct.13 conference, held in front of the empty high school, officials announced that the district was planning to sue Monsanto over damages caused by PCB contamination.
Wool at the time suggested that a successful lawsuit could help to pay the debt from constructing a new school.
“Any money recovered from litigation would be used to pay down the bond in future years and reduce the amount taxpayers would be required to pay on debt,” Wool said.
Prior to the district’s announcement of the lawsuit, two former high school educators filed a suit of their own against Monsanto over the contaminated building.