The Westbrook City Council voted Monday night to move up the date of a referendum on the new junior high school three weeks and to ask whether residents want to fund an auditorium as a separate question on the ballot.
In two separate ballot questions, residents will vote May 22 on whether to approve a $29.4 million junior high school, which would be state funded, and to authorize $4.1 million in local spending to pay for an auditorium. A public hearing will be held on the referendum on May 7.
“It was determined that we wanted to give the citizens of Westbrook the opportunity to vote on the auditorium,” said School Superintendent Stan Sawyer.
The May 22 date will come three weeks before a previously discussed date of June 12. Sawyer said he wanted to move the date up to allow the school’s architect, Harriman and Associates, more time to prepare final construction plans and to bid out the project to contractors.
The design concept will be presented at a meeting Monday night at 6 at room 114 at Westbrook High School. A straw vote will also be taken.
Westbrook School Committee member Tim Crellin questioned whether it would be better to postpone the referendum until after residents receive the results of a citywide revaluation, which are due to be mailed at the end of May. That way they could better judge whether they want to pay for an auditorium through their taxes, said Crellin.
City Councilor Ed Symbol asked Sawyer whether the earlier date was an attempt to hold the referendum before the results of the revaluation were made public.
Sawyer said the earlier date had nothing to do with the revaluation results going out at the end of May.
Symbol said he asked the question so the residents of Westbrook wouldn’t think the city was being “slick or sly.”
“There’s always going to be cynics,” he said.
City Administrator Jerre Bryant said he expected the revaluation results to be mailed sometime between May 18 and 22.
The referendum is the penultimate step in getting a new school built on the 65-acre plot off Stroudwater Street the city purchased from Thomas DeWolfe and Elizabeth Faye last April for just under $990,000. If approved, the final step would be a referendum on a concept plan.
Leading up to this point, the city worked through an extensive review process, in which all the state’s requirements had to be met before the state provided funding. With full compliance, the state will refund 100 percent of the costs of constructing a new school, with the exception of any extra construction the city chooses, such as a new auditorium.
Originally, the city and state were expecting to renovate or build a new school on the current Wescott Junior High site, off Bridge Street. Extensive problems with both the school and the site, however, led both parties to look elsewhere.
Residents can see the design concept for the new Wescott Junior High School at a presentation Monday at 6 p.m., at room 114 at Westbrook High School.
After the presentation and a question-and-answer session, a straw vote will be taken to endorse the design concept.
For more information on the project, visit www.wescottproject.org
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