Millbrook BOE plans for future

MILLBROOK — Wednesday, Sept. 14, the Millbrook Central School District’s Board of Education (BOE) invited the community to a public meeting to discuss a proposal to renovate the district’s athletic facilities.The board hopes to educate the public on their plans before the community votes in early December. The district facility repairs proposal would be a vote for budget authorization for high priority repairs needed for Elm Drive and Alden Place elementary schools and Millbrook Middle School. Those plans come along with a package proposal to renovate the athletic fields using $1.15 million in donations to renovate the district’s track and baseball field.The Sept. 14 public meeting was attended by a diverse group of people from the community including taxpayers, parents and Millbrook Central School District faculty and students. The public meeting was held in the Alden Place Elementary cafeteria. Jaeger led the public meeting by giving a slide show presentation about the planning process of the proposal.“In the last two years in particular we have honed into a comprehensive study by our architects that was introduced to the board in March 2010,” said Jaeger. “We have accumulated $1 million, the maximum in the capital reserve to deploy with voter approval against the project. We have been deeply fortunate to receive $1.15 million in donations toward improvements to our athletic fields. From this the board is thinking about a multi-phase approach over a number of years to begin to regress all the improvements in our facilities. First of those phases is for a vote in December of 2011; that’s why we have come together this evening.”Mosaic Associates, the architectural firm working with the BOE, put together a facility review study of all potential repairs for the district, prioritizing improvements and the potential athletic facility update in 2002. There was a voter proposition in 2002 to approve improvements to the district’s oldest facilities; however, the vote was not approved.“Only some of those improvements have been addressed through other means; however, over the last nine years so much of it still needs to be addressed today,” said Jaeger.The superintendent discussed with the public the possible options for the repairs, including the different types of roofing that can be done for the older facilities, athletic field irrigation and whether artificial turf is more beneficial than natural turf for the fields.“The project size is an important consideration for our community,” said Jaeger. “Obviously $30 million of possibility has been presented to us; we are going to look at doing this in phases. We have to look at the budget impact, the tax levy impact and the fiscal resources that are available.”The Walbridge Fund has provided the Millbrook Central School District $1 million for the track. The district has four-year access to $1 million of capital reserve funding that has been saved. The district has another two years to use the funding or it will be returned. The district has received donations from the Millbrook Tribute Garden for the baseball field. Altogether in reserves and donations there is $2,115,000 available to offset any project. Jaeger said that in the coming two-year period, previous debt to the district is expiring in the amount of $325,000 a year. This will leverage without impact to the budget and without impact to taxpayers. “This is critical if we package athletic fields, replacement and repair at the same time that we do improvements to our facility, the field improvements to our athletic fields become eligible for 23 cents on the dollar of state aid,” said Jaeger. “If we did it independently as a stand alone project — for example, we just went and redid the million-dollar track with no relation to building improvements — we would not be eligible for those 23 cents.”The board has made the decision that it is too much to accomplish all of the proposed items at one time, so it agreed the process would have multiple phases. It is hoping to start the first phase in the immediate future. The board presented the project proposal to the public in two options: the potential base project and the potential base project plus. The potential base project would be tax levy neutral including some of the facility renovations and athletic facilities upgrade. Whereas the potential base project plus has a tax levy increase range of +0.7 percent to 1.4 percent and includes items such as upgrades to the Alden heating system, artificial turf and bleachers with a press box. Jaeger ended the presentation and asked attendees to then engage in a discussion with those they were sitting with, giving feedback and comments on how they felt about the district facility proposal. Attendees of the public meeting had varied responses regarding the proposed facility planning but many saw this as a good time to start.