On Feb. 10, the $38 million infrastructure bond failed to pass by 80 votes, or a mere 1.8 percent. The question that should now be plaguing the minds of the Mamaroneck School Board is not will we be able to pass a bond, but how will we pass a bond? The voted-upon bond included funds for vital structural improvements. Conditions of certain structural elements at schools in the district are dire and, in some cases, in violation of legal codes. Undoubtedly, a bond of some form must succeed.
Much of the criticism toward the bond came from the inclusion of money to improve athletic fields. In some ways, the battle of the bond is an extension of that struggle to revive said fields that has been championed by the Mamaroneck organization Fields For Kids. While updated athletic fields may be important, $9 million of them is not absolutely essential and dying boilers at the Hommocks (more than a third of the defeated bond) and asbestos at the high school cannot wait. (The school board has reported that 20 percent, or $7.75 million of the bond was devoted to fields; the approximate $1.25 million that would have been put toward new playground surfaces at Chatsworth and Murray Avenue schools was not included in that figure.)
The School Board has said that after careful scrutiny, the $38 million bond contained only what was essential. As a mother of three Mamaroneck High School students wrote in an op-ed on Lohud.com, the bond “contains both glamorous and unglamorous components.” It all boils down to who considers what to be wants versus needs. Several days after the bond failed to pass, two friends in their lower sixties discussed the matter in Village Pizza, across the street from MHS. Both asserted that had the fields not been included in the bond, they would have voted for, rather than against.
Perhaps not everybody understands the importance of athletic fields, but it is now the School Board’s responsibility to ensure that the next bond does not suffer its predecessor’s fate. The Board needs to be prudent and tactical in designing the next version of the bond. The plan to improve athletic fields (known as Plan C) appeared in its entirety in both the original $75 million, and the recent $38 million bond; not a penny of spending on the fields was cut. One question the Board needs to ask itself is, does including field improvements reign in more net votes for or against? Furthermore, the question then becomes: how much of the $9 million toward fields should remain in the next bond? According to Plan C, the MHS football field will require approximately $4.2 million dollars to renovate, while the Baseball field cashes in at $2.8 million. Construction of the baseball field will result in two all-purpose varsity fields that overlap the baseball field. This seems more beneficial than the more-expensive alternative, which will only deliver a new, turf football field. However, the baseball field would wind up without a track, while the new football field would gain one.
Fields are not the only provisions getting heat. A $2.65 million project to install energy-efficient windows at the Hommocks is said by the Board to save (coupled with the new boilers they would install) $50,000 a year in energy costs. That means it would take just over forty years for the windows to pay for themselves. The age of the currently installed windows: forty years. There was also $2.66 million included to widen the distribution of electrical outlets, and $213,729 to renovate bathrooms. Seeing as the district has a recent history of poor construction design—an acoustically unsound auditorium at the Hommocks, a library that does not sufficiently meet students’ needs, an unnecessarily flashy café, a track that does not meet regulation standards and a baseball field that needs renovations, all projects completed within the last seven years—perhaps the School Board ought to do more research in these areas before undertaking such a venture.
In the midst of a financial crisis, it is important for the Board to remain sensitive to people’s economic conditions. The defeated bond would have caused taxes to increase by an estimated $150 per household in two years. That could seem like a large number to many people, during times of economic woe or not, especially those without children in school. Just as citizens nationwide are upset that they may have to pay for other people’s mortgages, nobody wants to pay for your children to have nicer bathrooms.
State law requires school districts to develop and execute five-year capital improvement plans. Perhaps the many smaller improvements, such as dormer removals, sidewalk repairs, window well renovations, brick re-pointing and others, can wait another five years. The School Board could, essentially, split the bond into two. Or, it could propose a smaller bond including only crucial elements and, each year, include a smaller project in the budget (the price of bathroom renovations would be less than .2 percent of the contingency budget). One way or another, the bond must be passed.
