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Eyes on East Hampton School District’s Debt

Thu, 09/29/2022 - 10:01

By June 2029, the East Hampton School District will have finished making annual $4.9 million debt payments from the $79.2 million renovation and expansion plan approved by voters in 2006. The following year, with a $1 million payment, the district will be done paying it off altogether. Looking ahead, school officials said this has created an opportunity for the district, which is about to begin prioritizing future capital projects across its campuses.

During a Sept. 20 school board meeting, Sam Schneider, who came on board in March as East Hampton’s assistant superintendent for business, likened the situation to a homeowner’s routine property maintenance. “Your investment will deteriorate” if you go too long without taking care of your house, he said. It works the same way with school facilities.

This means that there will be room in the budget for the district to borrow money anew without its hitting taxpayers’ pockets too painfully, school officials said. Taxpayers will have a chance to vote when it takes shape.

“If we allow the debt to expire and not replace it, that’s great for the first year for the taxpayers. They’ll have savings, but then it will hurt badly in future years when you have to put it back,” Mr. Schneider explained. “The theory is basically. . . to keep things as even as possible, to replace the debt that’s going to expire with new debt from new projects.”

He pointed out that it’s prudent to start the process now because projects often take several years to come to fruition, because of the need to secure money, draw up plans, receive state approval, accept bidding by contractors, and then the actual construction. For example, the district’s new $8.9 million transportation depot was in the works for at least eight years leading up to its ribbon cutting this summer.

In a 2015 assessment of campus facilities, a state-mandated process known as the “building condition survey,” a copy of which was provided to The Star in 2020 in response to a Freedom of Information request, East Hampton’s facilities were rated as “satisfactory.”

Adam Fine, the district superintendent, said on Sept. 20 that the district would be soliciting comments from parents, students, faculty, and community members, among others, to help identify and prioritize renovations and other improvements. The school board will start formal discussions of this on Oct. 18, he said.

“All of these discussions will occur publicly,” Mr. Fine said. “We have to look at our buildings, our facilities, and see what we need to do, what we would like to do, with the children and their educational, extracurricular, and co-curricular activities in mind. This will be a fully transparent process.”

 


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