Middle School Project: What’s the city’s role?
Published: 07-11-2024 5:16 PM |
Dan Williams posed a big question to the Concord City Council at its meeting Monday.
“What is your position on the school board’s middle school project?”
Councilors left it dangling.
The council is only required to answer questions about matters on the agenda, which led Mayor Byron Champlin to tell Williams to step away from the podium.
“I’m sorry, that’s not really a germane question,” Champlin said.
While controversy over the cost and location of the new middle school has dogged the school board, city council discussions have remained largely silent. Because the school district is autonomous, the project that’s expected to cost $152 million and influence the future growth and traffic of the city is none of the council’s business, many councilors and the mayor say. In some ways, that’s true: as a governmental body, the school district must provide its development plans, but city officials can’t compel it to conform to their building regulations or preferences.
However, parts of the project still to be ironed out where city leaders do have a say. Because the school is moving to a new location – from the Rundlett site to adjacent to Broken Ground School – school officials will have to work with the city on key infrastructure details. The city is also an abutter to the raw land where the new school is supposed to be built. So, while neither councilors nor the planning board have formal approval power over the project, the council’s disposition and its direction to city staff will shape the final product if they choose to take a stance.
School board leaders are in the final stages of winnowing down the design for the new school, which is estimated to cost between $136 million and $166 million. Like other projects, the district must supply plans, once they’re ready, to the planning board. But, unlike typical developers, state law says that city planners — which normally can reject projects out of compliance with city rules — is limited to nonbinding comments and recommendations, and can hold a public hearing, but isn’t obligated to.
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Historically, most government agencies — including the city itself — planning a construction project attempt to work within the city’s building codes, City Manager Tom Aspell told the council.
But the city lacks the powers it normally has to make demands of the middle school project as a development.
“We try to conform to as best we can to the existing regulations and treat ourselves like a developer. The same expectation we have is on the school district,” Aspell said. “They have the ability to say, ‘Thank you very much for your thoughts on traffic or utilities or whatever, but we’re going to go in another direction.’”
Because the middle school, if built, would go on raw land on the east side, adding a third school to the South Curtisville neighborhood, the district has to work with the city to iron out what kind of traffic and infrastructure needs the new school will have. Those discussions include a traffic study — held out of public view because, leaders say, it’s still in draft form — that would examine how to accommodate all the cars, buses and pedestrians at the new school.
“This project isn’t just about schools, this project is about the city of Concord,” Superintendent Kathleen Murphy said at the school board’s meeting last week. She described the relationship with city staff as a cooperative one. “They need to be our partners.”
Technically, private developers have to pay for city infrastructure improvements required to support their projects, but that isn’t always how it works out. Developers sometimes work with the city on an agreement — though, in this case, whatever infrastructure changes are required by the project come out of taxpayers’ pockets either way. The question is who will have to budget for them.
When asked by Ward 3 Councilor Jennifer Kretovic whether the district had yet asked the city to pay for any infrastructure related to the new school, Aspell didn’t definitively say. But he made clear what his answer would be: unless the council felt differently, it was a thumbs down from City Hall.
“Well, I’d hope they know the answer to that,” he responded. “Which would be, ‘I’d need to speak to the city council, but my recommendation is no.’”
Catherine McLaughlin ca n be contacted at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com.