Voters to decide Tuesday whether to back $25.6 million more for project. 

Special town meeting voters will decide if they will support an additional $25.6 million in additional costs to fund the Tisbury School renovation and addition project at a meeting scheduled for 7 pm Tuesday, Sept. 20, at the MVRHS Performing Arts Center in Oak Bluffs.

Voters approved $55 million for the project at a prior town meeting, and again at the ballot box. However, voters will have only one shot to weigh in on the $25.6 million funding request, a Proposition 2½ debt exclusion, because town and school officials sought and got permission from the state to bypass a ballot question . Ballot questions are the norm for increases in a tax levy. However, the town requested and the Massachusetts Department of Revenue approved an exemption finding that Tisbury wasn’t required to seek ballot approval because the monetary requests are considered an extension of the prior $55 million vote, which was already ratified by a ballot vote. 

School officials have said without the additional $25.6 million, the whole project will fall apart, and the town will be unable to recoup millions of dollars already committed or spent. 

Tuesday night, a week away from the special town meeting, a $70 million guaranteed maximum price (GMP) was announced for the construction portion of the project at a joint meeting of the Tisbury School committee and the Tisbury School building committee. That price is the contractual ceiling for the town’s construction manager at risk, W.T. Rich, to remodel the school, according to Harvey Eskenas, a senior project manager for W.T. Rich. However the total estimated cost of the school exceeds $70 million due to additional so-called soft costs. These soft costs, amounting to about $11 million, bring the overall cost of the project to $81.8 million. The soft costs aren’t contemplated in the GMP. At the joint meeting, Eskenas provided an up-to-date breakdown of estimated overall costs for the project and the amounts expended thus far. 

For the portion W.T. Rich is responsible for, pre-construction was estimated at $160,000, and $160,000 has been spent. For the actual construction portion of the project, the aforementioned $70 million is both estimated, “guaranteed,” and backed by a performance and payment bond that, according to Eskenas, will ensure the work is completed if W.T. Rich should default on its obligations. Of that figure, $12.2 million has been spent. 

For administration, which includes legal aspects, printing, advertising, and miscellaneous project costs, $223,095 is budgeted, and $7,496 has been spent. 

The cost of the owner’s project manager, Daedalus Projects, is estimated at $1.6 million, of which $1.2 million has been spent. 

The cost of architectural and design work by Tappé Architects is budgeted at $4.1 million, and a little more than $4 million has been spent so far. 

Miscellaneously categorized costs for the project, which include utility costs, permitting, moving, testing, and inspections are budgeted at $481,750, and so far $322,049 has been spent. 

Furniture, fixtures, and equipment like phones and computers is budgeted at $825,000, with $0 spent so far. 

Eversource work to bring in a new primary cable is estimated at $400,000 with $365,737 spent so far. 

A contingency sum of $3.8 million is budgeted, with $0 spent so far. 

The total project budget to date, including the previously approved $55 million and another $1,232,443 set aside in 2019, is $56,232,443. This leaves a shortfall of $25,610,841. 

Asked by school building committee chair Mike Watts if he anticipated the $70 million figure could somehow climb higher, perhaps through change orders, Eskenas said, “No, we don’t anticipate it’s going to go any higher, Mike, that’s it.”

In an email to The Times on Tuesday, Tisbury finance director Jonathan Snyder wrote that a median residential property in Tisbury, valued at $744,000, is presently taxed at $4,828 with Tisbury’s residential exemption and $6,475 without it (seasonal homeowners, for example). With the $60 million Tisbury has already borrowed, $55 million for the school and $5 million for roadwork, the same house with the residential exemption would have a tax bill of $5,394 or $7,234 without it. If the $26 million ($25.6 million) is approved next week, those same properties would be taxed at $5,644 and $7,569 respectively.

In a memo to the select board and school building committee , Snyder wrote that “[w]e find ourselves in the unhappy position of having to choose between two costly options.” Snyder said it boiled down to either voting in the $26 million or commissioning another redesign of the school, each of which had costs associated with it. 

Last week the project received the endorsement of Tisbury’s finance committee after a drawn-out meeting. The sole dissenting vote was Rachel Orr, a former school building committee member who left that body last year after disagreements about decisions it had made, among other issues she cited. 

The modular classrooms the town acquired through a lease agreement for temporary classroom space during construction might be costly to buy if the vote fails, school committee chair Amy Houghton said at the finance committee meeting. 

Houghton noted the town would remain obligated to honor that lease terms ($85,000 per month), and then it would have to negotiate to buy the modulars. Moreover, the lease includes removal of the modulars, so she suggested the town would be saddled with that cost should it break the lease. 

“If we purchase them, then that’s on us, and the town is going to have to figure out what to do with them, and I’m not sure where they would go,” Houghton said. 

Houghton said some solutions might be found, but “at this point, the project is not about keeping modulars forever and keeping a modular school in the town of Tisbury.”

In a letter to the finance committee read into the record by Nancy Gilfoy, town administrator Jay Grande described the Tisbury School as being in substandard condition: “The condition of the school has been so poor that in the last decade … an emergency repair to the heating system was needed, and the school boiler was replaced, the roof was replaced over the building; half the school population and faculty were removed to the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School so that abatement of hazardous conditions could be completed. The library and classrooms in the newer wing of the school had to be made weather tight due to water intrusion. The school systems are past their useful life, including fire suppression, and require replacement. Any failure of one of these critical systems will result again in the need for relocation of students …”

Asked Wednesday morning if town officials or school officials knew ahead of the 2021 landslide approval of $55 million in borrowing for the school that the project would be more expensive than $55 million, Watts said nobody knew then. He said it wasn’t until later, when the design of the school was 60 percent complete, that overages became apparent. Further asked about $8.7 million in costs that appeared to manifest in July but were absent in earlier calculations, including $4 million for a glazed curtain wall, Watts said those costs were always there. Earlier they may have been blank line items ($0 line items), he said, but these were nonetheless folded into other figures, sometimes general figures. As the project progressed past 60 percent design completion, these figures became more distinct. 

In response to a similar question posed by email in August, Grande wrote, “[T]he ‘$0’ items are accounted for in the numbers. To make it clearer, referring to ‘Glazed Curtain Walls.’ Curtain Wall Systems sometimes start off as metal windows, then sometimes change to storefront systems, or end up as curtain walls. So although the original budget notes $0 for curtain walls, and the dollars were carried on a different line item in the original budgeting. Remember the project has gone through a value engineering process which [has] modified materials and methods of construction.” 

At the joint meeting Tuesday, Martha’s Vineyard Schools Superintendent Richie Smith said there was “a dire need for a building for our Tisbury children and staff.” Smith described it as a “huge building project,” and noted another was on deck at the high school.

“It is not often that a school system engages in two major building projects in essentially the same year. We’re doing that. We’re also faced with a building project that is a track and field project at the high school. We have arbitration that we’re going into with our union negotiations.” 

Smith said the magnitude of what is in play can be distracting, and he wanted school employees not to lose sight of the focus of their work, “and the work is our children.”

He suggested that work hasn’t been lost on Tisbury. 

During a recent 550-person convocation at the Performing Arts Center, the first since 2019, Smith said Tisbury School staff showed a solidarity that was “inspiring for the rest of the staff to see” when they came in in hard hats and bright construction attire dancing to “We’re All in This Together.” 

Meanwhile: European Union pledges $100,000,000 to Ukraine for school rebuilding. How many schools do you think the Russians blew up? I hope they can find a good contractor.

My problem is why not bring this back to a ballot vote. I see but I don’t get ~ “the town requested and the Massachusetts Department of Revenue approved an exemption finding that Tisbury wasn’t required to seek ballot approval because the monetary requests are considered an extension of the prior $55 million vote, which was already ratified by a ballot vote”.

What is the honest reason the town requested the exemption? The folks will say no again? The last vote said no, now that expected $$$$ is totally over the hill and obviously something royally stinks here in my humble opinion. I believe many people screwed up bad for a very long time and we still really do not know all the facts what the total costs will really be. Why we need such a trophy school, when rumor has it enrollment is going down there, we cant get a stright honest answer and who is at fault for all this very expensive mess. Anybody that has ever picked up a hammer knows that on good sized construction jobs there are `always` $Overruns$!

Vote for it, more and more migrants are coming with children, we need room for them & housing, open your homes and schools, Build it “they will come” & are coming! Now we can do what we always said was right and our actions speak louder than our words!

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