Hours after Thursday’s belated ballot count revealed voters in the 18-town district had rejected the $149 million bond proposal, members of the Central Vermont Career Center School District Board met to discuss if, how and when to respond.
The vote was 5,751-3,872 for the November 4 special election.
Most agreed the process raised the public’s consciousness about the growing demand and importance of career technical education, as well as the shortcomings of the current center, which has been operating out of the same wing of Spaulding High School since it opened in Barre in 1969. However, the decisive results – the bond failed by 1,878 votes on a day when fewer than 10,000 ballots were cast – left little room to argue “no” meant “maybe.”
Further complicating matters was the fact that the two issues widely blamed for fueling the “no” vote can’t easily or quickly be solved.
Cost is one of them and uncertainty involving Act 73 (and a redistricting process that is fast approaching its first deadline) is another.
Moments after the results were announced earlier Superintendent Jody Emerson suggested both played a prominent role in the bond’s defeat. Emerson got no argument from a committee that hasn’t ruled out recommending a refined request be included on the Town Meeting Day ballot in March.
School director Todd Comen noted the board and the committee were accused of being “tone deaf” in the run-up to the vote, and worried that criticism would be fair if it didn’t take time to “reflect and regroup” before reacting to what voters just said.
Comen suggested the committee should take the time to consider and reconsider ideas that were proposed at public forums and on social media, as well as one that was presented at the outset of Thursday’s meeting.
“We’re going to need alternative solutions to the one big building,” he said, pausing, then adding: “For now.”
School Director Guy Isabelle suggested the board owns some of that because it waited until midsummer to aggressively make the case for the bond and the 167,000-square-foot building in Graniteville it would pay for.
However, more time wouldn’t have altered the cost of the project, and/or taken any of the mystery out of a redistricting process that is expected to be the subject of considerable debate during the upcoming legislative session.
Emerson predicted that debate could be going strong in March, when the board had previously hinted it would revive and revise the bond if it failed.
Emerson told the committee that remains an option, though the money spent on marketing for Tuesday’s bond vote is gone, and matching that level of outreach for a March vote, if the board decides to go that route, would not be possible. She said the district has spent the money budgeted for a design team headed up by David Epstein of TruexCullins.
Epstein said the team was willing to be flexible in the interest of advancing the project.
“We’re not going to walk away under any circumstance,” he said. “This is an important project for this community, and we want to do whatever we can to make it successful.”
Epstein was among those who urged the committee to press forward with the project, suggesting changing minds of enough “no” voters might be the best available strategy.
Former board member Paul Malone’s suggestion the committee evaluate the possibility of operating an annex to the current career center using a former school that was built in the late 1990s on Vine Street in Berlin, but is no longer in use. The 12,000-square-foot building is part of a 6.5-acre church-owned property that includes two other buildings. The total estimated square footage is more than 20,000 square feet.
Coupled with 47,000 square feet CVCC now occupies at Spaulding, that would be 100,000 square feet less than the building proposed on property in Graniteville. The district has that property under option at no additional expense through June 2027.
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