The Gorham Town Council Tuesday night urged Gorham residents to vote yes on an upcoming White Rock School referendum, unanimously saying that the school is a great value at little expense to the taxpayers.
About 40 Gorham residents sat through a 45-minute public hearing on the school Tuesday night, where councilors and PDT Architects of Portland – the design firm that would head up the project – answered the public’s questions about the proposed school.
The referendum, which councilors voted to approve, is Tuesday, Sept. 16. Absentee ballots can be picked up at Town Hall.
A vote to OK the $2.5 million, 20-year bond will add 5 cents to the town’s tax rate of $16 per $1,000 of valuation, said Gorham Town Manager David Cole. The following year it will add 20 cents and drop off after the fifth year.
Based on a home valuation of $200,000 and an interest rate of 5.07 percent, the new school would cost $10.20 per home in the first year, reach a final cost of $36.94 by year five and drop off from there, according to information handed out as a part of the presentation Tuesday night.
The total cost of the school would be $25,833,908. The state will pay $23,192,766 and Gorham will pay $2,480,000. An additional $161,142 will come from federal grants.
“You really couldn’t get more bang for your buck,” said Gorham Town Council Chairman Burleigh Loveitt.
“I encourage people to get out on Sept. 16 and vote positively for this,” Gorham Town Councilor Jane Knapp said.
If voters approve building the school, ground would be broken by June 2009, with a completion date of summer 2011, Lyndon Keck, principal architect for PDT said Tuesday night.
“We’re going to see the promised land pretty soon,” Gorham school Superintendent Ted Sharp said.
The Maine Department of Education has ranked replacing the White Rock School, which is outdated and overcrowded, 10th on a statewide priority list for help.
Built in 1962 for 85 students, the school now has 140 students enrolled in kindergarten through the second grade, and the school has had portable classrooms for more than 20 years. There are no bathrooms in the portables, forcing kids to cross the schoolyard to the main building.
Gorham wants to replace the White Rock School with a school for 550 children in kindergarten through fifth grade, giving the district three elementary schools, including Narragansett and Village schools.
The new school would be located on 25 acres of land about half a mile from the intersection of routes 202 and 237 in the northeast quadrant of Gorham, keeping it close to the existing White Rock School.
The new school would be nearly 82,000 square feet. It would also be designed to expand to house nearly 820 students, Keck said. The current White Rock School is 11,000 square feet.
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