Voting on the Lebanon School District warrant and for city and school offices will take place between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 12, at Kilton Public Library in West Lebanon (Ward 1), United Methodist Church (Ward 2) and City Hall (Ward 3).
LEBANON — Voters will decide next month whether to spend $29.4 million to renovate the city’s school buildings and construct an auditorium at Lebanon High School.
They’ll also be asked to approve a $43.7 million School District budget and elect three people to the School Board during the March 12 election.
Two separate articles on the School District warrant call for the modernization of three of Lebanon’s four school buildings.
Article 2 requests nearly $20 million for projects at the Mount Lebanon, Hanover Street and Lebanon High schools, while Article 3 would allow for the construction of a $9.4 million auditorium at the high school.
Both articles would require a 60 percent citywide vote to pass; state law requires that threshold to approve projects that require long-term borrowing.
Officials say the projects are needed to expand educational space, provide secure entryways and bring the school buildings up to modern standards. Aside from the Lebanon Middle School, which opened in 2012, the city’s schools haven’t seen a renovation for at least 20 years, according to city officials.
The renovations in Article 2 would build new entrances to the high school and the city’s two elementary schools.
Plans also call for a four-classroom addition, new cafeteria and larger art room and library at the Hanover Street School. The high school also would see construction of a performing arts center, and the Mount Lebanon School would get a larger multipurpose room, handicapped-accessible stage and a full kitchen.
The district estimates those upgrades would add 89 cents per $1,000 of valuation to the tax rate, which would amount to $223 in new property taxes on a home valued at $250,000.
But Superintendent Joanne Roberts said the costs could be lower if the Legislature moves to reinstate New Hampshire’s school building aid program, which was halted in 2010.
The state Department of Education has ranked Lebanon’s modernization projects as fourth and fifth on its priority list for building aid, although it’s not yet clear if lawmakers will dedicate funds for the program.
Meanwhile, Article 3 would appropriate $9.4 million for a 775-seat auditorium at Lebanon High School. Officials predict that project would add 42 cents to the tax rate, or $105 in new taxes on a $250,000 property.
School Board Chairman Adam Nemeroff said on Wednesday that the auditorium is needed because other stages in the city are either too busy or under-equipped to house high school productions.
The Lebanon Opera House has a full schedule, which can be hard to work around while trying to book performances, practices and rehearsals, he said. And the auditorium in the former Seminary Hill School seats only about 300 people and doesn’t have a backstage area.
The two articles are similar to a single $29 million proposal the School Board endorsed last year. That effort, which also included money for a new auditorium, failed to meet the 60 percent threshold, and was rejected in an 820-768 vote last March.
After the defeat, the School Board decided to separate the auditorium project into its own warrant article in hopes the school renovations would have a better chance at winning voter approval on their own. If both projects are approved, school officials say construction could start in March 2020 and end in 2021.
Residents also will be asked to OK a $43.7 million budget for the school district, a roughly 1.1 percent increase over the current spending plan. If that fails at the polls, a $43.3 million default budget would take effect.
The proposed budget calls for the addition of a full-time English language learning teacher and special education teacher at the high school. In exchange, a teaching position in the high school and one at the Mount Lebanon school would be eliminated.
Tim Ball, the school district’s business administrator, said there also are slight increases to retirement and health care contributions planned for next year.
“We’re being fiscally responsible, but we’re also beneficiaries of the fact that those things usually are often much higher,” he said on Wednesday.
Also on the ballot are three-year collective bargaining agreements with Lebanon’s teachers and secretaries. If both agreements are approved, an additional $708,000 would be spent on salaries and benefits next year.
The average salary for a Lebanon teacher in the 2017-18 school year was $65,533, compared with a statewide average of $53,984.
And there’s an article asking whether the School Board should report how it votes on warrant articles.
Nemeroff, the board’s chairman, said there’s no written policy about including vote tallies on the ballot, meaning they’re sometimes included and sometimes left off. The voters’ decision will settle the matter for future years, he said.
The practice of including tallies was debated as recently as January, when the School Board voted to remove them from the warrant, making it appear that the nine-member body fully “recommends” the modernization and auditorium projects.
Both articles were in fact approved by 5-2 votes, with two board members previously critical of the projects absent at the time.
On the ballot, voters will select from a pool of four candidates to fill three seats on the School Board.
Incumbent Tammy Begin is running for re-election against former Town Historian Carl Porter; Jenica Nelan, an analyst at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center; and Martha DiDomenico, who works in finance at DHMC. All four have children attending Lebanon schools.
All other races are uncontested.
Begin said she hopes to continue working on several projects in the coming years, including the modernization effort.
“I would like to see it through, whether it goes through this year or not,” she said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Begin, 46, sits on the School Board’s Personnel and Negotiations Committee, and helped to draft the agreements on this year’s warrant. She said both were negotiated well and without any impasse.
“I think three years is just too short a term for anybody,” Begin said, adding that she enjoys working with current board members and appreciates the group’s diverse views.
Porter, a former member of the Planning Board who works in finance at Jake’s Market and Deli and mounted an unsuccessful campaign for City Council last year, said he decided to run due to a sense of civic duty.
“When I stopped into City Hall there were only two people who had filed,” he said. “I’ve always felt a call to serve if there is a need.”
Porter, 35, said he also hopes to bring increased transparency to the School Board.
“There’s always been transparency issues, I’ve felt, from the board,” he said, adding that meeting agendas aren’t always clear and supporting documents can be hard to find. “It makes it difficult to pull apart what they’re talking about.”
DiDomenico, who declined to provide her age, said she’s also interested in providing more transparency to parents and the community. She said she recently had difficulty enrolling one of her children in kindergarten, partly because of mixed messages from the district.
“I think one of the topics that I’ve kind of been most frustrated with is communicating with the public,” she said. “I don’t think we do a good job communicating with first-time parents.”
DiDomenico said she also hopes to form clear policies and build an environment that helps parents trying to navigate the education system.
Nelan, 39, said she’s running to support the district’s education initiatives and guide the use of technology by all grades.
“I would like Lebanon to preserve its character and diversity of citizens and so, while I’m in favor of the modernization plan on the ballot, I am also conscious of the tax burden and the risk of pricing people out of Lebanon,” she said in an email.
Nelan also is in favor of a strong curriculum and is impressed with the educational offerings in the middle and high school.
“I love the Lebanon community, and I think the town does a great job of fostering and encouraging a town culture,” she said.
All four candidates expressed mixed feelings about the modernization projects on the ballot.
Begin said she is torn about the articles, in part because she knows some people will struggle to pay the resulting taxes, while Porter said he feels the projects are too expensive. Both DiDomenico and Nelan have supported the building upgrade but are undecided about the auditorium article.
On the municipal ballot, four members of the City Council are unopposed for re-election: Karen Liot Hill, Clifton Below, Shane Smith and Sue Prentiss.
The Lebanon Area Chamber of Commerce will host a candidates night for both Lebanon school and city candidates from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, inside the former Seminary Hill School at 20 Seminary Hill Road, West Lebanon.
The event will be taped and broadcast during the week on CATV for those unable to attend.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.