GREAT BARRINGTON — The effort to rebuild Monument Mountain Regional High School received an additional boost on Thursday night after the Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee voted unanimously to borrow $1.5 million to fund a feasibility and schematic study.
The development comes on the heels of the news last week that the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) has invited the school district into its eligibility period for state funding for a new high school.
Superintendent Peter Dillon told the school committee the district has an eligibility period that commences on August 1, after which the district has 270 days to accomplish a variety of tasks: conduct a feasibility study; ensure compliance; form a building committee; complete paperwork concerning Chapter 74 and vocational education; and confirm enrollment projections and get them certified.
See video below of the Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee’s March 10 meeting courtesy Community Television of the Southern Berkshires. The relevant discussion begins at 16:40:
“We’re going to work extraordinarily hard to continue to understand the needs of the community and move forward on this,” Dillon told the committee, adding that Berkshire Hills was one of 17 accepted into the eligibility period out of 41 applications from other districts.
In an acknowledgement that Berkshire Hills has been through this drill before, Dillon added that, “We can’t squander this opportunity. If, for some reason, we are unable to move forward as a community on this, I don’t think we’ll ever get this level of support again from the MSBA, so it’s a huge, huge deal.”
This will be the third try since 2013 to get state aid for the aging high school, which opened in 1968 and was built for a paltry $3 million. Within the span of one year, a pair of $50 million-plus proposals failed when Great Barrington, by far the largest of the three towns in the district, failed to approve an override to Proposition 2½, a state statute that limits tax levy increases.Â
In both cases, the state would have paid for nearly 41 percent of the cost, not counting incentives. Since that time, the district has submitted three more statements of interest to the MSBA and was denied eligibility for funding in each case.
In November 2014, the Prop 2½ override failed in tax-weary Great Barrington by a margin of 1,658 to 1,053, or by 61 to 39 percent, roughly the same percentage as the previous year’s failed vote on the $56 million proposal.
The district’s three towns have changed substantially since then. The town of Great Barrington, which effectively vetoed the proposal in 2013 and 2014, has almost 1,000 more full-time residents than it did during the last try and now has a fresh revenue stream from the cannabis stores that have opened up over the last three years. Property values have risen substantially since 2014, especially in the months since the pandemic began almost exactly two years ago.
Dillon also pointed to an amendment to the regional agreement governing the school district. That amendment, which was approved in town meetings in 2017, changed the way the three member towns will pay for capital projects such as the one being contemplated now. That amendment makes paying for capital projects more favorable to Great Barrington taxpayers than it was eight years ago when the second try at rebuilding Monument failed.
Another potentially major factor is the retiring of old debt that could soften the cost of the project considerably. In 2005, Berkshire Hills opened new regional elementary and middle schools on Monument Valley Road near the high school on Route 7. But in order to build Muddy Brook Elementary School and W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School, the district had to issue 20-year bonds to complete the $29 million project.
Those bonds are scheduled to be paid off in 2024, so if the debt for the two schools is retired at about the same time as the new debt is assumed for the Monument project, it would blunt the effect of the tax increases necessary to finance it. Officials insist it is too early to estimate the cost of rebuilding the high school or say whether a Proposition 2½ override vote would be necessary this time around.
In 2013, the MSBA funded the feasibility and schematic study to the tune of $1 million, but the authority will not do so a second time, so the district must foot the bill.
In response to a question from school committee member Bill Fields of Great Barrington, Dillon said the studies should be somewhat streamlined because “some of it can carry over and some of the existing conditions are the same” as they were in 2014.
Dillon said he and his team have adjusted the cost of the studies this time around, accounting for inflation to $1.5 million and that if the full amount was not spent, it would go into the district’s excess and deficiency, or reserve fund, where it would surely be used to pay down the debt.
“We think it’s the right amount and maybe there’s a little cushion in there,” Dillon said.
Dillon said the school committee will consider what a building committee will look like and consider options at a future meeting. Fields, who co-chaired Monument Next Steps, a panel formed to consider the fate of the high school after the 2014 defeat, said almost everyone from that committee is eager to become involved in this next attempt.
The school committee’s next meeting is March 31. Meanwhile, the Regional School District Planning Board meets on March 22. That panel is examining the future of the Berkshire Hills and the Southern Berkshire regional school districts, including possible consolidation.Â
A consultant hired by the planning board has said the future reconstruction of Monument Mountain Regional High School offers an opportunity for the two neighboring school districts to merge or consolidate operations and address a critical need for vocational education.
