How much more can town taxpayers afford?

At the Town Council meeting on April 8, 2024, the town’s finance director presented updated financial analysis of the property tax impact of the $150 million bond to build a brand-new high school on School Street and a new athletic field at the closed Curtis Corner Middle School. The new conservative estimate is that the bond will cause a 22.6% property tax increase. The earlier estimate that we had been given to rely on was 16%.

Council member Greg Sweet sent questions to the School Building Committee (SBC) that were not fully answered, and he put those questions on the TC agenda. Chris Spiegel, SBC project owner’s manager, attended the April 8th meeting. In response to Mr. Sweet’s question about how the Town was going to pay for the extra $4 million of the project plus the extra $32 million needed to fix the other four schools that are not being touched with the $150 million, Mr. Spiegel partially answered. He said that his cost estimate for the new-build high school was $4 million too much. Prior to the evening of April 8th, total cost of the new build high school and athletic field had been $154 million ($153, 820,038). That cost is still shown on the project website as I write this. It was a convenient answer for the extra $4 million – just cut $4 million in costs. Mr. Spiegel had no answer for where the $32 million is coming from. He suggested that some towns use the RI Dept of Education (RIDE) reimbursement money (the money SK has been chasing since November 2018 seemingly to justify not renovating SKHS and building a new high school in a new location). But the financing of the $150 million and calculation of the now 22.6% tax increase assumes SK will use the RIDE reimbursements to pay down the bond debt. If we don’t use the reimbursements to pay down the bond debt, the tax increase will be higher than 22.6%. If we bond the additional $32 million, the tax increase will be higher.

Also at the April 8th council meeting a citizen asked the TC to mail a notice of the upcoming May 7th bond referendum to all SK voters, including important information about the project such as (1) there is a bond referendum on May 7th, and (2) your property taxes will go up each year for the next 5 years and after that you will be paying 22.6% more than now – for the following 15 years. The 22.6% does not include future town and school committee annual budget increases of more than 1.7%. Nor are revaluations accounted for in the calculation.

Council President McEntee, Vice President Marran and member Alley balked at sending any information about the bond referendum to voters. Mr. McEntee said a flyer that will be ‘available in public places’ (wherever that means), a legal ad in the April 19th Narragansett Times (two days after early voting starts) and the project website (containing erroneous information such as total cost of the project and vague answers to questions with no links to specific data to support the vague answers), was notice enough. Ms. Alley was quite concerned with the cost of mailing, $15,000 in postage was too much to let voters know that there’s a vote coming up that if passed will add almost an extra quarterly tax payment to the cost of keeping a roof over their heads.

Council members Sweet and Bergner advocated for the mailer in the face of the McEntee/Marran/ Alley objections. The McEntee/Marran/Alley bloc were unable to defeat the mailer on April 8th only because the matter was brought up in public comment, not on the agenda, and could not be voted on. It will be on the TC agenda on April 15th. If no mailer is sent, it will be due to the decision of the three who don’t want voters to know what they are doing and what it will cost the voters.

On April 11th there will be an SBC meeting at 6 pm in the SKHS cafeteria about the bond and project. A second meeting is scheduled for Saturday, April 20th at 9 am, same place.

It’s time to learn and spread the very information that the majority on the town council do not want you to know. How many extra quarterly payments can you afford? How much more rent can you afford? We should all know before we vote.