Two local projects were taken back to the drawing board recently with positive results.
In Warren, school officials facing expensive and mandated upgrades to Warren Elementary School were anticipating asking voters to approve a bond of $5 million to complete the work. The issue was complicated by the fact that voters in the six towns of the Washington West Supervisory Union are working their way through the complicated questions associated with whether the local towns should merge sooner versus later, as called for by Act 46.
Act 46 requires school districts to merge voluntarily – on their own terms and with tax incentives for five years – by July 2017 (and vote on it by this July) or be forced by the state to merge – on the state’s terms and conditions in 2018.
The statute provides that merged districts may limit the amount of socialized debt that any particular school district brings to the merger. The local Act 46 study committee recently voted to restrict the amount of debt that a school district may bring to the merger to $2.55 million.
When Warren’s project went back to the drawing board it emerged weighing about $2.55 million. The project can still be done, meeting the state-mandated improvements, without exceeding the debt limit set by the Act 46 committee. That’s good news and good work.
Last year the Waitsfield Select Board heard a proposal for a new West Village Sidewalk that didn’t meet the needs of the town, business owners, pedestrians and other stakeholders to the project.
Several meetings and much public input later, the project came back to the select board this week with different priorities that reflect concerns voiced by residents, business owners and others.
To be sure, this grant-funded project which has a matching component of 10 percent is already over budget before a shovel has gone into the ground. And this is another one of those projects with a long list of additions/alternatives, each one with its own specific price tag. It’s got a lot of potential bling with those add/alts and it is unlikely the select board will opt for all that bling, but the basics of this sidewalk project are better than the initial version that sacrificed people and business owners for VTrans design standards.
That too is good news and good work.
