BCAT News

The Burlington School Committee Tuesday night began to discuss a long term facilities master plan, a living document that would prioritize major upgrades, repairs and new buildings for years into the future. 

“I don’t see this as a final conversation; I really see this as a starting conversation, and we might need to have more conversations about this,” said Superintendent Dr. Eric Conti. 

The master plan is one of several in the works in town; the school system has already worked on a master plan for its athletic fields, and the Recreation Department is working on a complete master plan for all town fields and parks. This school facilities master plan would project expected repairs on things like HVAC systems, flooring, roofs and even entire new buildings. 

“This may be considered a wish list in some eyes as well too, but a lot of this that’s in place is a lot of wear and tear,” said Director of Operations Bob Cunha. “We know that roofs are going to go; we know that bathrooms need to be refinished; we know that HVAC systems need to be rehabbed. …  But what this will allow us to do is say, Varsity Field was done now, we’re projecting [it’ll last] 10 years. Go out 10 years and put that in place now, then we don’t have to forget about it and in nine years go, ‘Oh yeah, now we need to put that back on the list.’” 

The release of the plan comes after the town Ways and Means Committee and some Town Meeting members expressed concern about a proposed $6.7 million project to renovate two fields at Marshall Simonds Middle School, saying the plan hadn’t gone through the usual planning and prioritization channels. Ultimately, a reduced $4.7 million version of the project was approved. But according to Conti, the plan also reflects a chance in the way the town anticipates its capital needs. 

“When we first started this, it was more of a wishlist, and what drove the long-term capital spending was the debt schedule, not the need,” he said. “So they would identify what fit under the debt curve, and then people would fit projects under the debt curve. If school had recently gotten under the debt curve, we would come off and the town would go on. So we sort of traded space under the debt curve. But it wasn’t ‘Why didn’t you have the high school?’ or “Why wasn’t this looked at earlier?’ Honestly, it was because it didn’t fit under the debt curve at the time, and that’s not how the town managed these conversations. So again, it’s really a drastic shift now to say we’re going to look at need. I think it’s important, but then if the debt schedule is going to be driven by the need, people need to recognize that it’s going to be more volatile than they’ve experienced in the past.”

The master plan would not include routine maintenance, which would fit under the typical operations budget.