GREENFIELD — Officials from across the county expressed affordability concerns with Franklin County Technical School’s plan to construct a new $246 million building during an information session on the project on Tuesday night.
Before a crowd made up of mostly city and town officials, Franklin Tech Superintendent Richard Martin joined Business Manager Elizabeth Bouchard, School Committee Chair Richard Kuklewicz and project architect Julie Spence, of Lavallee Brensinger Architects, to answer questions on the proposed construction.
While the project had previously been presented at Greenfield City Council and in past info sessions, Tuesday’s gathering at Greenfield Community College broke down the total cost into percentages that each of the 19 member towns would be responsible for funding.
“Look at what happened 50 years ago [when the current campus was built]. Look at the benefits that our community has seen from those students, many of them sitting in our audiences. They’re teachers at our school now, and some of our best teachers were students that were in our school,” Kuklewicz said. “This continues that legacy going forward — it is a huge amount of money, and at first I thought, ‘There is no way,’ but when you start to really unpack it, you realize that this is the right way for the communities to go.”
Presenting plans for the 152,785-square-foot, L-shaped new building, Martin explained that the tech school is currently in need of a roof replacement; repairs to the electrical, plumbing, water and sewer systems; hazardous materials abatement; a new sprinkler system; and other upgrades slated to cost an estimated $75 million. Martin added that bringing the building up to code would cost roughly $103 million.
Funding the construction of a new building through 30-year Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) bonds, rather than rehabilitating the existing building with multiple 15-year bonds, Martin explained, would serve as a more cost-effective solution that is less disruptive to students.
“We didn’t realize it was going to be that expensive, and it rivals a new facility. But the problem is, when you renovate for the $75 million, you’re only allowed to take out 15-year bonds, so the cost-per-year for the towns is even higher than a new facility, for which you’re allowed to take a bond for 30 years,” Martin said. “We did a lot of research on that, and came to that conclusion that there is no zero-cost option. That’s the hard part, given the economic times that we are all in.”
Voters in all 19 communities are expected to decide whether to approve the building’s construction on Oct. 6.
Following a detailed presentation of the project, the forum’s audience took turns asking questions — the majority of which were posed by municipal employees who claimed that funding the project would put significant, if not unbearable, financial strain on their towns.
Deerfield Finance Committee member Margaret Nartowicz, explaining that Deerfield’s current tax levy would be unable to accommodate the budget increase that would come from regional approval of the new school, asked the panel whether there is a procedure by which the district could request voters’ approval subject to a debt exclusion.
“That would be on the town level,” Spence responded. “Our district agreement kind of takes that piece out of it, so that the simple majority is what moves us forward.”
Building off of Nartowicz’s remarks and noting that most of the municipalities would not be able to afford their contributions without a budget override, Greenfield Mayor Ginny Desorgher asked when municipalities would be expected to begin making payments.
“It’s really going to fall along with our timeline and when we need to go out to bond. It will increase over the years and will continue to ramp up when we’re in full construction,” Bouchard explained. “It will be on each town, each member, to determine how they’re going to fund the project, whether they go out for the debt exclusion, which most likely would be the case. That would be handled at the town or city level.”
At the tail end of the financial discussions, carpenter Griffin Buell, of Local 336 of the North Atlantic States Carpenters Union, spoke in favor of the project, explaining that the trades are one of the few remaining opportunities young people have to build a career without an expensive college degree.
“The trades are one of the only routes that kids have that they can take where they do not get saddled with unreasonable amounts of student debt. These are things that we need to be asking ourselves when we think of the costs of this type of project,” Buell said. “I do hope that we can find a way to invest in our students, our kids, and especially with the way things are going right now … the trades are very important, and this school building would be an amazing opportunity for a lot of kids.”