Referendum

to cost approx. $31 million

Board settles on plan

for construction project

BY JENNIFER DOME

Staff Writer

The Millstone Board of Education has reached a compromise. Plans for a March referendum were finalized during the Nov. 24 meeting, almost two months after the district’s first referendum was defeated by more than 300 votes.

The first solution to the district’s overcrowding problem was a $39.9 million construction project that would have provided a new middle school, auditorium, transportation center, and renovations to the existing middle and elementary schools.

The final plan that board members agreed on last week scales the original project down considerably.

The transportation center, that would have housed the district’s buses, was stricken from it completely. School officials said they will deal with the problem of bus storage in the future.

The 1,200-seat auditorium will be included on the referendum as a second question. A third question will ask voters to approve the construction of bathrooms in some classrooms at the elementary school.

The main question on the referendum addresses site improvements for the drop-off and pickup area at the elementary and middle schools, phone system upgrades throughout the district, changing some science and technology rooms at the existing middle school into regular classrooms, and construction of the new middle school.

The new middle school plans have been reduced from the original proposal. According to Superintendent of Schools William Setaro, 30,000 square feet was removed from the plans and a couple of classrooms were taken out of the design. These changes came after board members were told by residents that the overall cost of the first referendum was the main reason it failed.

The district held a public meeting to hear residents’ concerns about the previous referendum, and surveys were mailed to each home in the township.

The tab for the first referendum was approximately $46.5 million. The state agreed to fund $6.6 million of the project, leaving residents to pay $39.9 million. Residents would have seen a school tax increase of 14 cents per $100 of assessed property value if the referendum had passed. On a home assessed at $400,000, that would translated to an increase of $560 per year in school taxes.

The projected cost of the new referendum, for the construction and renovations included in the main question only, is approximately $31 million — an $8 million decrease from the first plan.

If residents approve the auditorium, the overall cost would increase by about $3 million. If the bathrooms are approved, the cost would be about $500,000 more.

Setaro said these figures are tentative since the architects were still working out the site plans to include, or exclude, construction that the board approved at the last meeting.

Setaro has said that for every $3 million taken off the total cost, taxpayers will save 1 cent per $100 of assessed property value. Therefore, taxpayers could see a school tax increase of slightly more than 11 cents per $100 of assessed property value if the March refer­endum passes. On a home assessed at $400,000, an 11-cent tax hike would translate to an increase of $440 per year in school taxes.

"Not all board members will be happy, but we have to make some kind of compromise," Board of Education President Kathy Winecoff said last week.

Some township residents who attended the Nov. 24 board meeting said they were disappointed that certain parts of the original refer­endum were cut.

Setaro said that while looking at the survey responses, some residents seemed to want a big school but also a lower tax increase.

"I can’t make it big enough or cheap enough," Setaro said.

"We have to really start some­where," Winecoff said.

Board members discussed how they would get the information about the referendum out to voters this time around since they heard from many residents that there was not enough information out the first time.

"We need to focus on the people in the middle, the minds we can change," board member Sami Qutub said. He added that for the original referendum, "we bent over backwards to get the information out."

Board member Mary Pinney said the board should hold a ques­tion-and-answer-type meeting so residents can find out about infor­mation they don’t know, or to dis­pel rumors.

"A lot of these questions could be addressed in a situation like that if we could get people to come," Pinney said.

Getting residents to participate is one problem the board members have addressed since the first ref­erendum failed Sept. 30. When res­idents were asked to come to a pub­lic meeting so school officials could learn why the measure failed, about 100 residents came out. School officials said an invitation went to every home in the town­ship. According to Setaro, only about 670 surveys were returned.

Another issue the board dis­cussed was how to divide the grades between the three schools (the elementary school, the existing middle school and the new middle school). Setaro said that under the first referendum, pre-kindergarten through second-grade students would have been housed in the primary school, third- through fifth-grade students in the elemen­tary school, now the existing mid­dle school, and the new middle school would have housed sixth- through eighth-grade students.

The March referendum has school officials considering split­ting the third-grade, making one of the existing schools a K-3 school and the other existing school a 3-5 school. The other option would be to split all the grades with kinder­garten through fifth-grade students in one school, and first- through fifth-grade students in the other.

Setaro said the various grade configurations will be discussed during future board meetings.