ORANGE — An exhaustive process determining the fate of Orange schools is on its home stretch, as voters will visit the polls Monday to ratify a Proposition 2½ debt exclusion agreed to at Annual Town Meeting last week.
Residents voted 300 to 16 to spend money to build a three-story addition onto Fisher Hill Elementary School and demolish Dexter Park Innovation School. The plan is to move all students into the expanded and renovated building, which is expected to serve the town’s educational needs for at least 50 years.
Polls will be open in Ralph C. Mahar Regional School’s Grzesik-Bixby Gymnasium from noon to 7 p.m.
Dexter Park was built in 1951 and the Massachusetts School Building Authority, a quasi-independent government authority, in 2006 designated it a “Category 4” school, its lowest rating. Voters approved funding a feasibility study in 2018 to study the Dexter Park problem and devise repair or replacement options.
Bruce Scherer, chairman of the Orange School Building Committee, said this project is expected to last two and a half years.
The work is projected to cost $57.6 million, with a construction cost of $45.7 million. Orange will contribute $23 million, to be raised through the debt exclusion, if residents vote in the affirmative Monday.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority, which Scherer said gets its money through sales tax, will cover 80 percent of the project’s eligible costs. He said one of the expenses the authority won’t cover is asbestos removal at Dexter Park – something Scherer said should have already been dealt with. Voters at Annual Town Meeting also opted to appropriate, borrow or transfer from available funds the money to conduct this work.
Martin Goulet, of Hill International Inc., the company managing the project on behalf of the town, said at a virtual Orange Selectboard meeting in May that dampness in a crawlspace has resulted in pieces of the concrete floor deteriorating and breaking off, and part of a reinforcement bar is exposed. He said posts must be put under the center of all the floor joists, but the crawlspace is contaminated with asbestos.
Scherer said $208,000 was awarded for this work, which begins Monday, and this includes $50,000 for contingency, or unforeseeable expenses. He said the $208,000 figure is considerably lower than what was anticipated, as it was expected to cost as much as $250,000. Fixing the floor would resolve the problem for the remaining three to five years Dexter Park is expected to be used.
Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.