VOTE NO ON THE TURF FIELD
An Editorial from The Bow Times
The timing of a $2,000,000 bond issue as part of a $3,000,000 artificial turf field could not be worse. Whatever the merit of the Turf Mahal, it uses about $380,000 of tax money Bow overpaid to subsidize the cost of Dunbarton Special Education staff costs.
Now that the miscalculation has been discovered, the money Dunbarton pays Bow should go to hold the tax rate down and repay us for Dunbarton’s windfall at our expense.
Also at this time of record inflation we should not be inflating our taxes as well.
Finally, how soon we forget. Just two years ago (Bow Times, January 2020, page 1) this paper reported the town Capital Improvement Plan said:
“Renovation of the Bow Elementary School [is] estimated at a cost of roughly $10,000,000 and to take place in fiscal year 2021-22. The Committee suggests using $1,700,000 from Capi- tal Reserve funds and bonding the remaining $8,300,000 for a period of 15 years. Bond rates currently range from 1.625 to 3.50% so the Committee estimated the rate at 2.5% for planning purposes. This would result in an annual payment starting at $753,917 and declining over subsequent years.”
Are there to be no more funds spent on renovations? Is the need for more classrooms suddenly not a need?
Spending requires priorities and the better answer is to put money aside for a turf field in the capital reserve fund over a multi-year period.
When will the school board resurrect the October 3, 2019, Committee Re- port on the Bow Elementary School which came in as high as $11,788,000?
Is turf more urgent than classrooms?