Finally, the Middletown Board of Education has been able to award a contract for renovations at Middletown High School North, bringing to a close the six-year saga of the $78.5 million school district construction referendum.
This has to come as a relief not just to board members, who have been criticized for dragging the referendum process on for so long, but also to taxpayers, who agreed so long ago to support the multimillion dollar secondary schools renovation and expansion project.
It also has to come as a relief to present and future Middletown High School North students, who can now look forward to having a much-improved learning facility, and to their parents.
Work is supposed to get under way this weekend. Hopefully there will be no more stumbling blocks.
Board President Robert Bucco took the words out of everyone’s mouth when he commented last week, "It has been a long time, and there have been so many problems. Thank God we can finally give North its due and get this project done."
The district’s referendum project has grown by $10.5 million over the past six years.
Of that amount, $3.3 million was set aside to finish the three middle schools and High School South, while $6.2 million was earmarked for the project at North.
The remaining $1 million will foot the bill for additional construction management costs that will be incurred due to the extended length of the projects.
It’s been such a long time in coming that all Middletown residents — and folks from surrounding towns — will be breathing a sigh of relief when the first shovel goes into the ground.