MONROE — The Board of Education will vote Sept. 26 on whether to ask voters to approve an additional $41.9 million to cover increased costs for a new high school in Thompson Park.
By Bill Greenwood, Staff Writer
The referendum, which would go to voters Dec. 11, if approved, will not include the cost of a possible addition to the proposed school, currently planned to be 365,000 square feet. This is because the board has decided to monitor enrollment for around 12 to 18 months before deciding whether the school needs to be bigger.
On Monday, the board authorized Business Administrator Wayne Holliday to prepare documents, including a supplemental debt statement, that must be filed with the municipal clerk, the state Department of Community Affairs and the board before a referendum question can be adopted.
The board needs to approve a question by Sept. 26 to hold a December referendum. The next date on which the board could schedule a referendum would be in March, and that would push the school’s projected opening date from 2011 to 2012, according to school officials.
If official approval has not been received by Sept. 26, the board still could vote to adopt the referendum question for December. However, it would be up to the state Department of Education to decide whether to allow the question to be put on the ballot, Mr. Holliday said Monday.
Voters approved an $82.9 million referendum for the high school in December 2003. However, the school now is expected to cost about $124.9 million to build, according to William Costello, a project executive at Piscataway-based Epic Management.
The increase is due to increases in the cost of construction materials, such as copper, concrete and fuel. Mr. Costello said the new price also includes $825,000 that will be paid to Richard Grubb and Associates, of Cranbury, for survey work and to monitor construction on the site.
Grubb and Associates has been conducting archaeological testing on the proposed site of the high school to determine whether David Brainerd’s Bethel mission, an 18th-century community of Lenni-Lenape Indians, was located there. The testing was required by the state Department of Environmental Protection, which must grant final approval for a land swap between Monroe and Middlesex County. If approved, Monroe will trade 175 undeveloped acres for the 35-acre, Green Acres-protected high school site, which then would be transferred to the board. The swap has received conditional approval from the State House Commission.
While Grubb and Associates officials have said they found no evidence to link the site to Bethel, they have reported that about 3.6 acres of the site are historically significant. The DEP is willing to release restrictions on the remaining 31.4 acres under the conditions that an archaeologist be on site during construction in case additional artifacts are found and that data recovery, or an intensive excavation, be conducted on the 3.6 acres. Official DEP approval has not been received yet.
The board also decided Monday to hold off on asking residents for money to build an addition to the proposed school so the district can monitor enrollment and come to a better understanding of whether an addition is needed and, if so, how big it would need to be.
The addition was being considered because a demographic report completed Aug. 15 by Kinnelon-based Whitehall Associates shows that the district will have 2,125 high school students during the 2011-2012 school year, when the new high school is projected to open. The school currently is planned to accommodate only 1,800 students.
However, Joseph Richardson, of Whitehall Associates, said Monday that the housing market in Monroe is declining and there probably will be fewer students in the high school than projected in 2011-2012.
Superintendent Ralph Ferrie said Monday that, based on enrollment monitoring conducted by the district, that number could be anywhere from 1,649 to 2,125 students, a figure with which Dr. Richardson agreed.