Board of Aldermen 12-23-2019 Page 16
One other question that keeps getting talked about is that we have a lower enrollment. | think with better
schools, this is not really going to be a State of the Art School but a better School System, it will bring
younger families in. | can tell you that from my family that have looked at places to live, States to live, they
look at the School Systems first. So if we have a School System for Middle Schools, for fifth graders and
so on, that is a good school, we will attract younger families here and | think that is one of the things that
we want to do. | am for it, I’ve been on it for 2 years, I’ve listened to all of it. Oftentimes, the public doesn’t
react until they start hearing those big numbers and then they come out and react. | think the public has
been asking some incredible questions, | think the public especially those in the areas have brought up
some good concerns. | also think each of those concerns have been looked at. | know Alderman Dowd has
worked with the architects to try to answer these people and we have done our best | think. Nobody’s
questions have been ignored. So thank you.
Alderman Dowd
| have some familiarity with this project. It has been well over a year going through all the studies, | am not
going reiterate anything that was said. On the bonding | have met no less than five times with the
Treasurer and there are a number of things involved in bonding. There is no set payment per year; if it
looks like the bond payment for a year is going to be high and affect the tax rate the wrong way there are
ways around that. Also there are things like we sell bonds and they are so much in demand that we get a
fee from some of the companies, they pay us to actually buy our bonds. I’m not exactly sure how that
works but that’s what | was told. Also, we can move the payments around and we can buy the bonds for 20
years, we can buy them for 25 years. There are many ways to manipulate that and the idea is to keep that
bonding level fairly level so to try to impact to say what it is on a personal home of $300,000.00; you can’t
say that. | was with Treasurer Fredette this afternoon and he says, “You can’t possibly say that because |
can change that payment as need be and City Services could change”. That impacts more than probably
this will.
When we approve a bond, any one of these bonds, he does not go out that next day and buy a bond. He
won't buy a bond until he needs to. We have ways of covering early expenses, especially in this instance
where we already have $2 million dollars to spend. So that payment is not really going to impact anybody’s
home as far as property taxes are concerned; it is going to stay level just like it has for many years.
The other thing is that all of the questions that were asked have either been answered or tried to be
answered that five inch study is over a year’s work by two of the best professional firms involved and they
are here tonight; Harriman is our architect and Harvey is our construction manager. They are truly
professionals and they have a ton of experience and when they are doing the pricing analysis and they are
doing the educational analysis and the design analysis; it is really outstanding. So | urge everyone to vote
for this.
Alderman Tencza
May | just ask a question through the Chairman to you, regarding some of the questions with the design of
the project. If the Chairman could just briefly touch on whether any final decisions have been made in
particular with the issue of access to this piece of land and what the process will be like going forward to
finalize the project in case anyone in the public has questions or concerns about it moving forward.
Alderman Dowd
I’m not sure what the question was?
Alderman Tencza
Access and the process moving forward to finalize design for the school, location and everything.
