The issue here is not the budget or the documents behind it. Lane was raising the question of how we allow our officials to conduct themselves when representing us. To have a temper tantrum in a regional meeting and insult another elected official is uncalled for, regardles off what the issue at hand is, and should be condemned by the other members of the BOS. View Comment

Congratulations to the School Building Committee on getting this proposal approved. This is a major step forward. Having objective outsiders to review the proposal and sign off on it gives me a lot of confidence that the project is on the right track.. View Comment

This is a great decision and I'm glad the committee has gone this direction. Putting our children through a 3 + year construction project just to save a few dollars would be a mistake. We need to note that the cost figures in this article are labeled "construction costs". They are not the full project costs. The full project costs are much higher and were disclosed last week. Don't get confused and think the numbers are jumping all over the place week to week. They aren't. The numbers here are just a portion of the full project, and they are consistent with the costs we heard last week for the construction portion. Congratulations to the Committee on making a a great decision for the Town. View Comment

This would have been a good question to ask last night at the forum. Why didn't you go and ask them instead of posting it here? Fortunately, I did ask this question after the meeting and found out that the original estimate was from the MSBA based on very rough guidelines of middle schools. At that point the MSBA had no information on number of students, or potential sites (and therefore potential site development costs) or the presence of HazMats or information on any number of other issues.The purpose was solely to let designers know that this was not a $5m project or a $100m project, so that the correct kind of companies bid on the job. The committee has been very consistent in telling us that these are estimates and that they will change as the project moves along and gets more defined, so don't get your knickers all twisted every time a new number comes out. View Comment

The School Building Committee is doing a good job of keeping us informed on the project and I appreciate all the hard work they are doing. It was a bit shocking to see how expensive any of the options are and I hope they find a way to bring that cost down. Maybe more "green" initiatives to get higher reimbursement from the state. Sounds like the annual cost is about the same for all options, so we should chose the best plan without worrying about the cost. View Comment

SMR3357: All town committee meetings are open to anyone who wants to attend, resident or not. The latest word from the building committee is that they are giving a presentation tonight at 6 and soliciting input from the community on the 3 options being considered. Then they are meeting at 6PM on both Sept 5 and Sept 11 to debate and decide which option to put forward. There is a period for public comment at all their meetings. View Comment

Hey Ed, your ignorance is not a basis for public policy. Just because you do not know why assistant principals are important does not make them unimportant. Just because you don't understand the importance of developing a curriculm that meets state and federal standards does not mean that it is not important. Fortunately the professionals we hire to run the District do know what is important. The most obvious flaw in your rant is #4. When they wanted to replace the old high school you screamed that if it had been maintained better it wouldn't need replacing. Now you scream because they ARE maintaining the new building. Just evidence that you will never accept what they do. And therefore, we shouldn't bother with listening to what you say about them. View Comment

I have seen no discussion of what a forensic audit is. I wonder if the school committee even knows what they are considering buying. Forensic audits start with a blank page and recreate the activity for a certain period as it should have been recorded to determine if every transaction was properly handled. Based on what I've read here, there is no question of whether the accounting was done correctly or not and no question of whether money was stolen. The issue is that they used flawed spreadsheets to make decisions on where to spend money. That is not anything a forensic audit will deal with. Doing such an audit would be a waste of money. They can and should get a review of the procedures they follow in decision making and improve them, but that is not an audit. View Comment

It was a very interesting night. It is obvious that the Committee is doing a thorough review of all the available options and will provide us with a well thought out solution. I also liked their emphasis on getting public input at their meetings so they ensure they build the project the town wants. Way to go! View Comment

I'm glad they are being very public about looking at all the options. It will be good to see a professional analysis of the pluses and minuses of each of the options mentioned. View Comment

It has been clear since this committee was formed that they would look at all options to solving the problem at Mountview, inlcuding renovation, but also including new buildings. This should not be a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention. It is also important to remember that doing a renovation is not automatically cheaper than building new. By the time you are done dealing with asbestos and other haz-mat issues, moving walls, replacing all the mechanical systems, adding the required classroom space and complying with the required ADA and building codes, it is frequently more expensive to reno. Plus we have to have somewhere to education the children during the renovation, and that will cost a lot money to provide, as well as being very disruptive to their education. Just ask anyone who attended the high school during that renovation project. View Comment

Aquitane seems very confused by a straightforward article. The article clearly says that this is the committe that will bring the proposal forward next year. There is no "committee to study whether to form a committee". There is no reference to thinking the money involved is "pocket money". In fact, they are spending the study money to come up with a thoroughly investigated recommendation complete with accurate cost estimates, which I think is great. In the past we voted on projects with only a rough idea of what they would wind up costing, this time we will have a much better idea. And a large pool project was voted down once, then smaller pool was approved. There were not "many, many" attempts at it to "slip through". Name withheld refers to it as a wish list for our elected officials. Actually, the state recognized it as one of the worst buildings in the state and jumped it to the top of the funding list immediately. Itis not just a local opinion that it needs work. And it is a great time to be building, as we just saw with the police station, which came in $3 million under budget due to the economy. So this is why we will hear this argument put out there. It's TRUE! I am glad our officials are taking care of our community and I hope this building gets built soon. View Comment