The Problem:
Since the district was formed as a cooperative in 1962, our school building repairs have been funded through warrant articles, usually ~$1.0 to $1.5 million each year. Each warrant has focused on a single project, but with Mt. Caesar the work required 3 separate warrant articles in 3 separate years. There are fundamental problems with this approach:
- Some projects are much larger than $1.5 million, but the work cannot be split up
- Each year that we delay, the cost of inflation raises the price of a deferred project
- One project at a time / One school at a time means each of our schools must wait 5-15 years before work would begin
- As time goes on and buildings wear down, new projects are continually added
- All together this creates a never-ending cycle of rising costs, and leaves multiple schools in disrepair and with outdated learning environments
The Solution:
The proposed renovation project will leverage the State of New Hampshire’s building aid program, which is only available for large scale, ‘whole building’ projects. The State of NH could fund up to 55% of the MRSD elementary renovations. The district would take out a bond (loan) to fund the remainder of the work. The benefits are:
- Reset the district’s project backlog by doing the work all at once
- Create a stable, predictable tax rate
- REDUCE taxes