To the Editor:
As a historic preservationist, chairman of the William Street Historic District Commission/Tisbury Historical Commission, and a builder with an emphasis on renovations, I attended the July 17, 2017, meeting of the Tisbury School Building Committee (TSBC) to oppose the demolition of the present Tisbury School. Within days I found myself a member of the TSBC. My first thought at the invitation to join the TSBC was the old phrase “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Fine with me, I thought.
With many years of committee and board member experience — a former member of the Up-Island Regional School Committee, the high school building committee, the school superintendent search committee, a board member of MVH Daycare — I thought I had the experience to move the TSBC toward a renovation/addition rather than demolition and a new build.
To oppose any endeavor effectively, one must understand the opposition. I began to examine the factors that drove the TSBC to the new build choice. Through the fall of 2017, I grew to respect the members of the TSBC. I learned the TSBC hired an excellent and experienced Owner’s Project Manager (OPM), Richard Marks of Daedalus Projects, and a creative and responsive architectural team, Peter and Libby Turowski of t2Architecture. Both have proved to be very professional firms with extensive experience in school construction. This did not help my cause to preserve the “old brick school.”
When I was a member of the West Tisbury School Council considering the middle school addition project, I learned it was imperative to understand the education plan of the school, including class size, enrollment projections, Island-wide shared services, state standards, community use, safety, evacuation plans, emergency service access, and many other factors that drive space needs and design. While educating myself to the needs of the Tisbury School, attending site visits to schools under construction, and critically scrutinizing the proposed new-build school plans, the decision to build a new school gained credibility both functionally and financially. Over the months my learning curve became less steep, and the facts began to take precedence over my objective that the old school should be saved. It became clear a new-build makes both short- and long-term sense for the town of Tisbury.
The preservationist in me wants to renovate and add to the existing school, but the facts do not support this nostalgic and idealistic notion.
- The TSBC has been holding public meetings, workshops and working groups for over two years. Opponents and proponents have been welcomed to all meetings in my nine months of membership.
- Some claim a renovation/addition could be completed for $25 million. This was an interesting prospect to consider; however, those of this opinion have not produced credible and verifiable budgets to support this assertion. Our Owner Project Manager, using comparative statistics of recent school renovations, projects the cost of a renovation/addition to be $3 million more than the new-build project.
- A list of Massachusetts schools scheduled for renovation/addition in 2019 have projected costs ranging from $453 per square foot up to $693 per square foot. If we average these costs at $575 per square foot and renovate the existing school, something from a space-needs reality we cannot do, the equation would be: existing school, 56,410 square feet, renovated at $575 per square foot, equals $32,435,750. This exceeds the town’s cost to build a new 75,390-square-foot state-of-the-art building. Understand this would be a “go it alone” path, without any state funding.
- In all renovation/addition options for the school, the town would incur the cost of temporary classrooms, a required temporary gym, and, because of our location in a wind zone, the cost of a foundation for the gym would add another $2.5 to $3.5 million to the $3 million of additional cost related to renovating the existing school. This amounts to $5.5 to $6.5 million, significant taxpayer dollars for temporary structures lacking any long-term benefits for the town.
- Though immeasurable ahead of time, there will be change orders and cost overruns for unforeseen conditions associated with any major renovation. If you accept the unsubstantiated claim that we can complete a renovation/addition for $425 million, add in the cost of temporary structures, and allocate just 10 percent for unforeseen expenses, the town will have spent between $30 and $31 million to renovate the existing school. In the end, the town would still own a building 100 years old, and would likely inherit a compromised finished product that presents ongoing maintenance costs which will prove very costly for future taxpayers.
- One well-reasoned renovation/addition proposal projected a cost of $43 million. While it preserves the existing building, this design falls 15,000 square feet short of the state-mandated requirements to receive state funding of $15 million. If you add the cost of the required square footage, this proposal validates the facts submitted by our OPM that a renovation/addition will cost at least $3 million more than a new-build BEFORE adding the cost of the temporary classrooms and a gym with a temporary foundation.
- While we would all like a path of self-determination with our town, organizations like the Massachusetts School Building Authority exist because most if not all cities and towns in the commonwealth are incapable of effectively and efficiently handling a project of this scope. Yes, we may be able to handle the bricks and mortar, but can we meet all the regulatory and programing requirements of the state and federal governments that are necessary to receive both building and annual funding?
- Doing nothing is not a viable alternative. The school suffers from deferred maintenance, has inadequate classroom, storage, cafeteria, and meeting space. Windows have failed, and brick and concrete façades are crumbling. The school has been cited for not meeting education standards, and safety is becoming a concern. These problems will not go away, and the cost to manage them will escalate over time. There is no way to cap expenses, as some have proposed, without inviting serious costs down the road.
- The tax impact on a home valued at $515,000 will be $558 at the completion of construction, and will reduce annually until paid in 2042. The TSBC in coordination with the town treasurer will provide tax impact information in increments of $100,000 of value for your consideration.
OK, where does that leave us as a community? How do we fulfill the social contract most effectively for this and future generations?
- We can roll the dice on a hypothetical and unsubstantiated claim we can renovate and add on to the existing school for $30 to $31 million, accepting the expense of maintaining the 90-year-old building.
- We can dream of relinquishing annual state and federal funding, and renovate without adding to the existing school — creating, while newly renovated, a substandard, noncompliant building for $32,435,750.
- We can renovate and add on to the existing building in full compliance inclusive of MSBA reimbursement, spend $37.5 million to $38 million, and waste $5.5 million to $6.5 million more of the taxpayers’ money.
- We can leave the children in the existing school, avoid the waste and cost of temporary gym and classrooms while building a state-of-the-art school for $31,986,520, inclusive of a 5 percent construction portion contingency.
Dear friends and neighbors, before you vote at town meeting and in the voting booth, I ask you to separate the facts from fiction and cast your vote based on fact, not wishful thinking.
Harold Chapdelaine
Tisbury
Excellent and well thought out. Thank you for your expertise and analysis.
I find it quite unsettling to read this letter. We appropriated 825k to investigate ALL options to our school needs. A large contingency within our community has asked on numerous occasions for the TSBC to show us a renovation and addition proposal that scales back the cost and program, operating within MSBA regulations that are more flexible for renovations and additions than new construction regulations, and potentially may reimburse at a higher level (up to 4% more reimbursement). Now at the last hour, this letter states since the people asking this did not produce themselves “credible and verifiable budgets” we have dismissed this option. That is utterly outrageous. It was the JOB of our consultants, and school building committee members to produce these answers for our community. The fact that we were not shown the tradeoffs between a scaled back renovation and addition proposal and new construction, leaves a HUGE question in many voters minds. There has been a clear bias amongst the decision makers in this process going back to votes by the school committee in 2012 for new construction. They only produced for consideration a more expensive reno/add proposal to further their own desires, to the detriment of an open discussion about whether there is a viable solution at a lower cost for the town. In the closing part of this letter there are 4 options presented going forward, the first 3 are wildly inaccurate and not substantiated in any way, and the last is the option they want. I find this letter to be a bridge to far in my mind in regard to how we should be presenting facts to the community. It is shameful.
Wow! What an amazing thoughtful letter. Harold has years of experience in Vineyard construction. It is worth paying heed to his thoughts. I often think if we islanders listened more often to these voices of experience we would avoid the many costly foolish mistakes that are often made with these public works projects.
I hope his analysis and words make a difference in the deliberation at town meeting.
I agree with Davemv. Harold is above reproach when it comes to this topic and his views were dismissed by zetetic with a poor sport attitude response. It appears that with the facts zetetic has on this that he is one of the committee members that wasn’t listened to or someone who attended the meetings regularly and the committee dismissed his scheme. Sounds like sour grapes. Living in another town, readers like me, base their decisions on facts, not finger pointing at others to produce materials that would be pertinent to make a decision. This project has been going on for years and if Harold was against this in the beginning and has changed his mind I would assume he has done the homework needed to make that decision, as he has outlined to eloquently. Maybe zetetic should have produced his homework to have it counted.
Harold may be beyond reproach in your opinion, but my point is that a reasonable renovation and addition project was not investigated by the TSBC and their consultants because that was not what the leaders desired. Harold joined the committee AFTER the vote was taken to go with a new school on the current site. All he is doing in this letter is post rationalizing their original decision, which was taken immediately after they removed the manter site from consideration, in which they did not spend any time reviewing possible options with an addition and renovation project. He has not based any of the above on any thorough analysis of a scaled back renovation and addition proposal, because one was NEVER done. Asking regular citizens to generate that option when we as a town spent 825K trying to figure out what the best solution would be for the town is just not fair. And it seems like a HUGE mistake to not have thoughtfully investigated the tradeoffs between a renovation and addition project that DECREASES the cost compared to new construction. You can call it sour grapes, but I think voters should be aware of how we ended up where we are.
OK, thank you for the explanation. I still think that a rational person, a rational educated person such as Harold can decipher a stalling tactic such as your own. It seems like more delaying would further increase the cost of the project be it a renovation or a new one. Correct?
excellent letter, Harold. I am a Tisbury homeowner, and was already sold on a new school for a variety of reasons, but you nailed this one down.. Good to see thinking people out there..
Yes, you are correct, construction costs, school budgets, taxes and in general life, all costs are going up. Maybe some leveling off is in our future, but who really knows. Either way, this does not mean we should not have been more thoughtful in how we vetted the right choice for the school. So, in my opinion, given where we are in today’s world, we should of been striving more to protect our environment, our culture, our history and our cost of living. There really is not much in the new construction project that addresses any of these points seriously. There is nothing in this proposal that speaks to the importance of shaping our future built environment to be more in balance and regenerative for the planet, there is nothing in this quite mundane proposal that relates to our unique historical and cultural character. And, there certainly is nothing in this proposal that attempts to reign in the growing costs of both construction and annual budgeting. If you want to call asking thoughtful questions, that indeed should of been thoroughly answered while be were busily spending the 825k we allocated towards this, as delaying, I’m fine with that. The fact is that the TSBC, once they decided on new construction, have basically been running out the clock until town meeting and ballot votes on this schematic proposal are taken.
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