East Hampton School District officials will officially present their three bond proposals at a March 17 school board meeting, and there are some significant changes since the projects were decided on.
The trio of propositions totaling over $125 million includes an indoor pool, a new turf field and bleachers, an indoor athletic facility with an auxiliary gym, lights for football and tennis — but now, a domino effect will be required for all of the upgrades to take place.
The first bond offering is valued at $63.9 million and contains upgrades for all three of the district’s schools. If it passes, Proposition One will be paid for with $64 million in new debt issued between 2028 and 2030, and should have no impact on taxpayers, since the new debt will replace existing debt as it is retired.
The second proposal is for a new indoor pool initially priced out at $43.68 million. Proposition Two would cost the average taxpayer $194.37 a year. The district is now recommending a slight increase to that budget.
The third proposition is $18.54 million for an indoor athletic facility, which would cost the average taxpayer $82.53 per year.
While Proposition One has always needed to pass in order for Two and Three to be approved, Proposition Three now depends upon Proposition Two.
“We have realized through conversations with our architect that we made numbers Two and Three contingent on number One passing, which makes sense,” Adam Fine, the district superintendent, explained at a school board meeting on Tuesday. “The problem becomes Three as a standalone building. So if Two went down and Three was voted in, there would be a substantial increase in the cost of that item, meaning the sports facility — which would be the full-sized court and the small turf indoor field — would have to be attached to the building.”
With that in mind, “what we’ve done — with our attorney’s advice — is attached Proposition Three to Two. For Three to pass, Two has to pass. Because [Two is] the building that would have the bathrooms and be attached to the building. Otherwise we’d have to go back and add approximately $10 million, which is something I don’t see as a tenable solution.”
East Hampton’s assistant superintendent for business, Sam Schneider, is also proposing an increase in the pool building budget to more accurately reflect its anticipated cost. “We took a careful look at the pool budget. As Adam was alluding to, each of these bond projects has to operate as independent budgets and you can’t mix the two together. So we recommend that the pool bond go to the voters for $45 million instead of $43 million, a slight increase but we want to make sure that we have enough money to do the whole project under the terms that we understand them now.”
Mr. Schneider also reminded the board that all of these budgets may be in jeopardy if New York State passes legislation this spring that could increase labor costs by as much as 40 percent.
The district shared all of these updates at its Tuesday board meeting, while also presenting the initial district budgets for the 2026-27 school year. While the bond proposals may increase in cost, few year-over-year changes to the budgets are expected.
“As we’ve done before, the administration evaluated the budgets and obviously you have a lot of administrators who want a lot of things for their building and the kids, and I think it’s a testament to their work, and Sam’s work with them, to keep the budget and maintain their excellent programs. Maybe we’re putting things off a year, but it’s responsible budgeting. We’re held to budgeting at 2 percent. We don’t want to go over the cap and we don’t want to go over the cap in a bond year, obviously.”
One area where the district has gone way over budget this year: snow removal. While East Hampton has had a surplus in its snow and heating budget in past years, that is certainly not the case in 2025-26. While heating has been in line with past years, snow removal is already at $238,176. The annual budget is $96,000. Mr. Schneider summed up the situation with five words everyone can support: “It needs to stop snowing.”