Boyertown >> The potentially dramatic property tax increase proposed by the Boyertown Area School Board has two of its members reconsidering the Boyertown Area Senior High expansion project.
During Tuesday night’s board meeting, Paul Stengle raised a motion for district administration to look into the financial and legal ramifications of reducing the $61 million project. Christine Neiman seconded the motion.
Stengle stated that the cost was “unneeded” due to a recent demographic study with little to no growth projected.
Other members of the board spoke out against the motion. Board member Ronald Christmas cited “years of demographic studies” to the contrary.
“We’ve been kicking this can down the road for years,” Ronald Christman said. “We’re finally doing something about it.”
Board members noted that the project solves a number of problems within the district. For one, they stated that overcrowding at two elementary schools will ease when the sixth grade moves into the junior high schools, and the ninth grades will move to the expanded BASH.
Another point for the expansion: the existing school will already need work to meet building codes.
“No one is against the $31 million for those projects,” Stengle argued, pointing out that expansion nearly doubles the price tag.
Aside from easing the crowds at Montgomery County elementary schools in the district – which have endured most of the growth – the changes that accompany the expansion have academic merits as well, highlighted by Christman and the board’s Vice President Jill Dennin.
Having the ninth grade in with the high school and having room to use an academy structure at the high school is expected to be a boost to student performance, according to Dennin.
“At first I was going to support the motion, because I don’t see how gathering information is a bad thing,” said board member Donna Usavage, who was attending the meeting via teleconference. “But after hearing these arguments, it doesn’t seem like a good use of administrators’ time to do research on something we have already decided.”
After hearing the arguments from the opposition, Stengle offered to withdraw the motion, but Neiman declined to withdraw her second, and the motion was voted down 5-2, with Stengle and Neiman being the minority votes.
“I want to move forward. I want to stop looking in the rearview mirror at decisions we made two years ago,” Board President Stephen Elsier said.
When the meeting did move forward, to the public comment section, the expansion was brought up again, this time by a group of union contractors who took issue with the winner of the bid for the HVAC.
Brian McMahon, a business agent for Steamfitters Local 420, introduced nearly a dozen union members, all of whom live in the Boyertown Area district. Each took a turn to raise questions about the contractor who won the bid. The concern was that the contractor was using different equipment than what was listed in the contract.
Elsier said that the district would look into the issue.
