On Dec. 5, Facilities and Transportation Director Dave Benner gave the Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor Community School District Board of Trustees a simpler list of prioritized projects which would split the potentially $10 million in costs over summers through 2025.

For the summers of 2019 and 2020, Benner listed four items for Boothbay Region Elementary School he said are especially important: a building envelope upgrade, heating ventilation and air conditioning upgrade, replacement of vintage ventilators, and replacement of transformers. The total cost of about $3.8 million does not include the costs of the other high priority items set out between now and 2020. Those would raise the cost to nearly $4.5 million.

That does not include three items for BRES in 2019, five items for BRES in 2020 and 19 items for Boothbay Region High School in 2020. All those costs will have to be estimated by firm Lewis and Malm for about $50,000.

At the last meeting, Benner said he found someone who can clean the ventilation systems in BRES at about $1 per square foot – about $100,000 in total. Benner said he received another estimate from the same business to clean the ventilation system in the gymnasium alone for $5,000.

“That is the most crucial one, that is the unit that has the insulation inside the duct work from the heating unit all the way to the gym,” said Benner.

The only catch is, it is not a budgeted item, said Superintendent Keith Laser. The capital improvement account currently has over $73,000, Laser continued reading a text from Finance Officer Kathleen Pearce, but no one was sure if any of it can be spent without voter approval.

The board voted unanimously to let Benner have the BRES gymnasium's ventilation cleaned for $5,000 if the board is allowed to tap into the capital improvement funds without a public vote.

With the Trustees' history of seeking loans for improvements and working the repayments into each year's budget, it might be possible to pay for some of the upgrades with loans, Laser said. The upside to this would be that increases in the budget will continue to stay in line with how the board normally operates, said Laser; however, the downside will be that the loan payoff would be years in the future. Loans are not going to become any cheaper, said Laser. He said costs are rising about 5 percent every year and interest rates are only going to climb.

Parent Sarah Mundy said the CSD should consider starting a public dialogue about the longer term issues such as costs older buildings tend to incur over shorter time periods.

“You can keep loaning yourselves money left and right, but sooner or later you're not going to be able to pay it back,” said Mundy. “This is an ever increasing need and the bigger picture needs to be addressed. I know you guys are trying to do that, but if the big picture needs to be addressed, that is something the community needs to address.”

Vice chair Steve Lorrain said he wants the towns to take the initiative to put the future of the schools as a concept to vote – that is, do the people of Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor support even having an elementary school and a high school?

“If that vote comes back 'yes,' we're going to have to have a bond issue and it's going to have to be $8 million, $10 million, whatever it is. Otherwise, we're just going to keep parting and piecing all this together over and over and over.”

Boothbay Town Manager Dan Bryer said a vote was not out of the question, but they will have to justify the projects and costs via outreach. The more interaction with the communities, the more buy in the Trustees may get, said Bryer.