HOLYOKE — The City Council has voted to bond for $475,000 to pay for a feasibility study for building a new middle school on the site of William R. Peck School.
In a 9-4 vote, councilors narrowly mustered the votes needed to issue a bond. The feasibility study is an early step needed to secure substantial reimbursement for the project from the Massachusetts School Building Authority. The MSBA requires that the money for the study be appropriated before the city moves forward in the process.
Those who voted against the project were At-large Councilor Kevin Jourdain, Ward 2 Councilor Will Puello, Ward 3 Councilor David Bartley and Ward 5 Councilor Linda Vacon.
Speaking to introduce the issue, At-large Councilor Joe McGiverin said the new building would not only improve the experience of students, but that it would allow the school department to get middle school students out of elementary schools and, as a result, consolidate a few of those schools. That, he said, is the district’s plan for moving away from a K-8 model, in the process saving costs on operations and administrator salaries and allowing for more efficient budgeting.
“Our schools are in tough shape,” McGiverin said. “This isn’t about building just one school.”
Jourdain was the most vocal about voting against bonding for the money for the feasibility study. Jourdain was a vocal opponent two years ago of the city’s failed effort to pass a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion override at the ballot box to cover the costs of building two new middle schools.
Though Mayor Joshua garcia has said the school project won’t need a tax override to cover costs, Jourdain questioned whether the city had done enough analysis to understand whether it would be forced to bond for other services in the future. He said that if the city ends up unable to “afford” a new middle school building, it will have wasted money on the feasibility study.
“Why would you agree to make a non-refundable deposit of a mortgage of a home you can’t, or don’t know you can, afford to pay,” Jourdain said. “That’s what you’re doing today.”
Bonding for the study won supermajority support from the council, but one vote could have swung the decision either way. At-large Councilor Tessa Murphy-Romboletti reminded councilors that they weren’t bonding for $35 million that night, for example, but would have to take further action at some point in the future if deciding whether to build.
“This is something that our community has needed for a while,” At-large Councilor Jose Luis Maldonado Velez said. “It’s time.”
Jourdain has previously criticized what he characterized as the “emotional BS” he hears from people advocating for building two new schools instead of sound financial reasoning. At-large Councilor Israel Rivera said that the opposition has been emotional too, they’re just different emotions. He said he remembers when he first took classes at the University of Massachusetts Amherst after years as a Holyoke Public Schools and Holyoke Community College student.
“I didn’t miss no classes,” he said. “This comes along with the feeling of being in a space where you’re appreciated.”
Vacon said that a good building doesn’t necessarily create a good education, noting the dilapidated state of UMass buildings when she attended. She and Puello stressed that there was time before the April deadline for taking a vote on funding the study. Vacon said she needed more big-picture financial forecasting before committing to money for a study.
“I hear the word transparency all the time,” Vacon said. “I’m hearing the word, but I’m not seeing the transparency.”
Ward 6 Councilor Juan Anderson-Burgos pushed back against the idea that people showing their emotions in supporting a new middle school was a bad thing. Ward 4 Councilor Kocayne Givner said her decision wasn’t based on a love of children — “I don’t have any,” she said — but on a belief that communities are healthier when their children are well-educated, occupied and stimulated.
“In order to breed success we have to have good schools,” Givner said.
Now that the study funding is secured, the MSBA will make a decision by this summer whether to invite Holyoke into its next phase of the process — the feasibility study phase.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.