In Wilmington, 63%, or 230 of those participating in the poll, said they’d prefer to renovate the current high school facility, and 134 of those polled, 37%, said they’d prefer consolidation of the two towns’ elementary schools. Whitingham’s results were almost exactly reversed – about 60% of voters, or 82 of those polled, preferred the consolidation option, while 55 voters, or 40% picked the renovation.
Board members have said they’ll move forward with one of the options after Town Meeting, but in light of the poll results, facilities committee chair Phil Taylor said the boards will have to meet and discuss the situation before picking one of the options. “My personal feeling is that we have to take the work that we’ve done and bring the renovation project to a bond vote,” Taylor said. “I think this shows Wilmington residents really do have an attachment to the school building downtown. The question is, if people are not willing to give up the Wilmington facility, are they willing to bear the additional cost of renovating that facility?”
Outgoing Twin Valley School Board Chair Ed Metcalfe said he was surprised at the results in Wilmington. He said that one of the reasons that the board pursued the consolidation option was that Wilmington residents had been reluctant to pass a bond for renovation at the school in the past. “I was surprised, not so much that people wanted to keep the high school in town, but that they were willing to pick an option that will add so much to Wilmington’s tax rate and likely put the town in the penalty for years to come,” Metcalfe said.
Estimates of the tax impact of the two options suggested that the renovation option would add about 17 cents to Wilmington’s tax rate, while the consolidation would add about 3.5 cents. Thanks to Whitingham’s $2 million credit for the renovation, both options would have limited impact on taxpayers in that town. “It’s helpful for the boards to know that Wilmington taxpayers are willing to pay millions of dollars extra over the coming years to support the renovation of the high school building. I wouldn’t have figured on that.”
Wilmington School Board Chair Tom Manton said he doesn’t have any recommendation on how the board should proceed – yet. “I predicted a split vote a year ago, and this was one of my objections (to pursuing the consolidation option),” he said. “We’ve been spending our political capital on this instead of trying to win voters’ support for a (renovation) proposal. It has made voters weary of the process.”
Board members had announced, before the earlier poll, that they planned to move forward with the option that got the highest aggregate of votes. When the board decided to pursue a new consolidation option, Manton says they lost political capital to create consensus around a renovation plan. “We pursued the shiny object,” Manton said. “Voters have thought all along that we should be fixing what we have now.”
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