How much money are you asking the towns to borrow?

In total, we're asking to borrow up to $63 million. The total cost to pay all of the money back over 30 years would be approximately $90 million, though we have not yet acquired exact annual rates and percentages. 

What's that going to mean for our taxes?

UPDATED (2024-10-18):  Tax Impact Calculations

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(2024-08-24):  We don't know the exact effect on the mill rates in either town because: 

• Until we issue the bonds and lock in the borrowing, we don't know the exact annual payments, and;

• The board hasn't decided yet exactly how much of the general fund carryover will go into the project, or how much of the capital fund (which currently has $2.7m in it) we will use to soften the blow in the first years, and;

• The Town of Gray is still finalizing a brand-new assessment.

Why now? In this economy?

We've been working on pieces of this project for more than 10 years. There have been the same needs for roughly all of that time. After a lot of work, which you can review in the History portion of this website, we think we have put together a generational project that provides excellent value for the taxpayers and enhances the student experience immensely, matching the promises we have made to the students. 

The MSAD 15 School Board does not profess to be economic experts. We've simply identified needs for fulfilling our mission and this is what it costs to meet those needs. It's up to the voters to decide whether the cost is worth the return on the investment, and do their own thinking on the state of the economy and their own personal finances. 

Are we applying for or eligible for state Department of Education funding? Is any of this at all eligible for state funding?

The HVAC is using the state revolving renovation fund — that's a DoE grant. We don’t think we will be competitive with an application for the rest of the facilities expansion. There is a long list of applicants; we can apply, but it's unlikely given what the priorities of the department of education are right now. They are looking for new school projects that consolidate outdated schools. We are trying to maintain our assets. We would be lower down that list.

Where is the report the bond committee issued with its recommendations earlier this year?

Right here.

Who served on the bond committee that created those recommendations?

Penny Collins, School Board

Frances Monroe, School Board

Cole Chandler, School Board

Sharon Morey, School Board

Craig King, Superintendent

Diane Boucher, Director of Finance & Operations

Geoff Robbins, Dunn Principal (Special Projects)

Rod Pooler, Community

Collette Tweten, Community

Marnie Morneault, Community

Nathan Priest, Athletic Director

Emily Flynn, Performing Arts Teacher

Where is the original application for the HVAC grant funding and who developed it?

After completing HVAC work on the high school that was funded by federal Covid money, Mechanical Services offered up knowledge about grant money available through the Department of Education's School Revolving Renovation Fund, directly targeted at HVAC improvements, and offered to help us with our application. 

They hired third-party engineers to assess our school buildings, and those engineers made a presentation to administration, making recommendations for HVAC upgrades. 

You can find the answers to the questions we asked those third-party engineers here. 

You can find our application for the funding here. 

We were the highest awarded school district in the state for this funding pool. Clearly, the state agreed with the engineering assessment and application.

Please explain the funding breakdown on the air quality project

The cost of the improved air quality across four schools is $8.9 million. $3 million is a loan from the state we don't have to pay back, $3.4m is a loan from the state we pay back at 0% interest, $2.5m is a loan we take out at traditional bond rates. 

GNG won the most state funds from the state Department of Education's Revolving Renovations Funds for this project out of all statewide applications last year, and the cap on state funding will go down next year if we do not take this award. The need for improved air quality and HVAC system does not change. 

I've heard it was a no-bid contract to do the HVAC work. Is that true?

No. You can watch Diane Boucher, CFO of MSAD 15 at the time, explain the whole bidding process here, but here is a summary:

On March 6, 2024, the school board voted to approve the SRRF award for all four schools and to pursue Russell School independently of the SRRF award, and MSAD 15 issued an RFP on March 7. We opened the competitive bids for the project on Friday, March 29, 2024. The one bid received was from Mechanical Services, it was for slightly less than the estimated project size we created for our grant application and so we accepted it. 

Why aren't you breaking the fields, theater, gym, and cafeteria into separate pieces?

There are a few reasons:

• We benefit financially from doing them all at the same time. We save money on engineering, design, labor, and materials, and we allow them to stage the project properly, rather than have to leave things open for whether we want a gym or theater in the future.

• We don't want to pit these communities against one another. It's not theater OR gym OR fields OR cafeteria. It's solving our needs or it's not. Why would we want to spend not enough money to not solve our problems?

• These things are only going to get more expensive. If you're saying "not now" to any of these pieces, it means you're saying you either don't want it at all or you want a more expensive version. 

• We have never put a bond package this large in front of MSAD 15 taxpayers. We simply don't know what the community will bear, so we might as well put forward the project that solves all the needs and see how it fares, rather than try to guess what the community will decide is the right amount of money. 

Didn't the state pass LD 1503, banning PFAS use? How can we put in artificial turf after that?

Yes, we are aware of this law. You can see that they are still in rule-making mode on this by clicking here. However, at the moment, sale of artificial turf containing PFAS is not banned until after January 1, 2029. We would come in under that deadline, but that doesn't mean PFAS has gotten any safer in the meantime. People should absolutely take this into consideration as they consider Question 3. As we say on the Turf Page, we are hoping to find PFAS-free artificial turf, but we can't guarantee the product will be available, as we have yet to find a supplier. 

Does this plan have enough parking for the facilities?

The current plans add an additional 190 parking spaces to the parking already in place and reconfigured traffic flow to ensure easy movement around the campus. 

Crosswalks are extremely important. Is the sidewalk on Libby Hill slated to be put in with federal dollars? What about the one on Route 26? Are those part of this bond?

As part of ongoing efforts, the school board and Town of Gray have applied for and won two separate grants — one from the Maine Department of Transportation; one from the federal government — which will pay for a crosswalk and lights connecting the middle school and the high school and a crosswalk and lights across Route 26, connecting the high school to residential developments across the street, where many kids already cross. These are unaffected by the bond, and will happen regardless, but part of the timing of the bond is to try to dovetail construction with these two projects in the summer of 2025. 

How can I vote on this without knowing specific details, like what kind of fixtures will be used, or a specific flooring material, or where the snack shack or outdoor bathrooms will be sited?

There's only so much detail we can show in plans before the bond is approved, because it costs money for architects and engineers to decide on those fine details and it doesn't make sense to pay for all of that before we even decide to do the project in the first place. Our engineering and architectural partners use a third-party estimating firm to look at their basic plans and provide estimates of cost. Then, if we approve the project, some of the approved borrowing goes toward getting the plans to final stages. And, for sure, during that process we will continue to consult with the relevant stakeholders. 

If you'd like to review the standards for school design and construction created by the Department of Education, that's what our partners use and follow.  

Further, some of the answers to our questions won't be available until we start moving earth and seeing what's underneath. Things like siting the new septic system or figuring out how much room will be left over after installing the new parking spots and how that affects the location of the snack shack may have ripple-on effects we haven't considered yet. 

MSAD 15 has long preached flexibility and a "test and learn" philosophy. We think this plan has the right amount of detail to get us started, but leaves enough wiggle room to make sure we don't make any decisions before we have to or, or that would tie our hands and force extra spending later. 

If this gets approved would the use fees be increased? Would access be limited because everything is new?

We just increased our use fees at the end of this school year, and that should hold. The use fees are tied to required janitorial and facilities upkeep costs. We are not looking to increase the cost of access or limit access. We want more people out using these resources, not fewer. If this passes, the community will be paying for it over time. We are not looking to ask them to pay again at time of use.

And increasing access has been a priority from the beginning. We did not want to design anything that we would then be too scared to let the kids and community use. The idea is to increase our usage, increase activities, and increase growth and learning.

Is irrigation for the new fields included in the cost estimates?

Yes, all of the sod fields would have irrigation included. Part of our aim is to make sure every field is optimized for maintenance so as to maximized time on field without damage. 

This is a large impact — what has the discussion been around impacts on other schools? What else is in the pipeline?

You can find this in our archives, we heard this question in April and before the bond committee met we went and looked at all our facilities and systems and put it all into an asset management software package. That’s where our HVAC system work came from. We got right on applying for that grant to see if we could get that paid for. The facilities will continue to require maintenance over time, but we do not have massive projects in the pipeline. 

How long would this all take?

This would happen over several years. A good working timeline for all projects is 36 months. The scale of a project like this will require phasing. We are looking at a 24-36 month construction duration. How it is presented as a final package may open us up to different contracting options based on size of the project. One of the reasons to do all of the borrowing at once is so that we can plan for the most efficient implementation of the construction timeline, rather than, for example, opening up the ceilings for the HVAC work, closing them up, and then doing sprinkler work in the same ceilings a couple of years down the road.