Lebanon
The nine-member School Board will meet on Wednesday to discuss the results of a mid-September session where it slashed about $1.5 million in construction projects. Among the cuts were plans to reconfigure the parking lot at Lebanon Middle School and build a new entrance, bathrooms and concession area to the Lebanon High School gym.
The board also voted, 6-3, to separate plans for a new auditorium and creative arts space at the high school into a separate ballot question. The move makes it so the $9.4 million addition would stand on its own. Opposition to that part of the project would not affect the other construction proposals, if residents vote to support a bond in March.
The upcoming meeting will be a chance for board members to review the current project’s scope and potential cost, said Board Chairman Adam Nemeroff on Monday.
Amendments could be drafted or decided on during the district’s budget season later this fall, he added.
“At this point, we’ve essentially gone through and reviewed the options of what we’ve seen as priorities, and figured out what we wanted to keep or didn’t want to do,” Nemeroff said. “The idea (of the meeting) is that we don’t know exactly how those changes or the things that we added or removed affects the total cost.”
Architects now estimate the modernization project will total $29.4 million, down from the roughly $30.8 million proposed this summer, according to a presentation sent to the board ahead of the meeting.
If both parts to the modernization project are approved in March, the city could see a tax increase of $1.25 per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value, according to estimates presented to the School Board last month.
That increase, which assumes payments spread out over 20 years, would amount to an additional $312 in next year’s taxes for a home worth $250,000.
If Lebanon were to forgo construction of the auditorium, the tax rate would go up 83 cents, or $207 for a $250,000 home.
During deliberations last month, some board members argued that the cuts aren’t deep enough to appease city residents, who voted, 820-768, in March to kill a similar $29 million modernization plan.
That vote required 60 percent approval for the district to seek a 20-year bond.
Together, Board Vice Chairman Richard Milius, and members Christina Haidari, Suzan Louzier and Tammy Begin formed a voting bloc that proposed further cuts from the project.
“I struggle with this project more than any other, I think, because there’s nothing here that isn’t a real serious need,” Milius said in a CATV recording of the meeting.
“At the same time, if we go nibbling around the edges — $200,000 here or $300,000 there — we’re not going to get to where we need to be, if we want to have any hope of getting this approved on the ballot,” he added.
Haidari also urged her colleagues to better prioritize students’ needs.
Books and classrooms are necessary for a child’s education, she argued, while a new stage at the Mount Lebanon School is not.
“If we’re talking about critical needs here, we need to get to those because I really have a bad feeling that if we stick with almost the same number that we proposed last year, it’s going to fail again and we’re going to be in the same boat,” she said. “Our students need some things, and they really don’t need a stage.”
Others pushed back, though, saying the plans are a result of several community forums and months of discussions with teachers and administrators.
“We discussed it over and over again and presented that these are the priorities that we want for the Mount Lebanon School,” said board member Tom Harkins, in response to attempts to cut the elementary school’s construction budget. “I understand wanting to reduce the cost, but we’ve pretty much hashed all that out.”
The Lebanon School Board will discuss the proposed project at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at Lebanon Middle School.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.