Vote set for $10M high school auditorium
Resident will vote Dec. 5 on a $10 million proposition to construct a 700-seat auditorium at the high school.
Voting will be from noon to 9 p.m. in the grade 3-5 cafeteria at Mill Road Elementary School on Mill Road.
“Many opportunities are lost because you don’t have a large gathering spot for your school community where you could take advantage of guest lecturers that might come up,” Superintendent Paul Finch said.
The school currently uses a gym that has a stage for performances, which officials said has poor acoustics and is extremely difficult to arrange when significant gatherings are scheduled.
“If our neighbor Bard College is hosting someone for a lecture and we’re able to have some of that person’s time and we think it would be valuable for our kids to hear what that person has to say ... we’d like to be able to take advantage of that quickly,” Finch said.
Finch noted that astronaut Mark Kelly came to the school, but not all students could participate in the assembly.
“We were scrambling for space and we put in half of the gymnasium,” he said. “It was limited as to the number of kids who could attend and that’s the kind of thing where we could take advantage of having an auditorium.”
Funding for the auditorium would include a $3.5 million state Dormitory Authority grant.
“Assemblyman (Kevin) Cahill really does deserve credit for helping us secure this grant,” Finch said.
Officials estimate that 64.4 percent of “eligible” expenses would be reimbursed through state aid, but did not provide an estimate of how much of the construction would qualify for aid. They estimated the project would have a 1 percent annual impact on the property tax levy during a 20year bonding period, with expected debt retirement in 2019 keeping the auditorium project from increasing tax rates.
Finch said the district would like the project to incorporate sustainable energy use.
“We haven’t entered into a detailed design phase, yet,” he said. “We’re going to be looking at ways to make this building as green as we can within the existing budget. So, we’re going to design the roof in a way that it would be able to sustain solar panels and the Red Hook Education Foundation has actually expressed an interest in potentially purchasing solar panels to help offset any operating costs.”