Residents who are looking for a chance to dig into more details on the big school building project headed to a Special Town Meeting in May may want to mark their calendars.
In two weeks, the Select Board will hold a meeting with the Neary Building Committee to hear from them and ask questions.
Kathy Cook (Select Board Chair and an NBC member) has been providing brief updates to the board on a regular basis. But earlier this fall, board member Al Hamilton made clear he wasn’t happy that the committee had yet to make a full presentation to the board on the big capital project proposal.
According to Cook, she expects them to spend about 90 minutes hashing through project details at the joint meeting on Tuesday, December 17th.
The meeting will include the full committee, their project consultants, and the schools’ Superintendent and Asst. Superintendent of Operations.
Since there has been some public discussion about concerns over the old landfill uphill from Neary (Lundblad Field), they will also bring in Pare Engineering’ Tim Thies. Thies is responsible for the regular tests/inspections of the site.
The meeting will begin at 6:00 pm, Cook doesn’t expect to get to the Neary building agenda item until around 6:30 pm or later.
I expect the Neary project presentation and discussion to start at about 7:05. We have some other things to deal with before then which is why we are starting at 6:00 p.m. instead of our usual 6:30 p.m. The meeting starting at 7:05 will be a joint meeting with the Advisory Committee. After the Neary project discussion the Capital Investment Planning Committee (CIPC) will present the ten year capital plan for the Town and make their recommendation to the SB and Advisory for capital spending for FY 26. After that presentation Brian Ballantine (Town Treasurer) will present the initial FY 26 budget which will represent the amalgamation of each departments’ initial ask for FY 26. It will be a long meeting but a very important one.
Kathy Cook – Select Board Chair