The Andover Select Board will consider a petition to call a special town meeting when it meets Monday.
If the select board approves a motion to schedule the meeting, it would be held on Monday, Nov. 20, according to the agenda released Thursday afternoon for the board’s next regular meeting. Residents Kathleen Grant, Mike Meyers, and other opponents of the proposal to build a new Andover High School filed a petition Wednesday.
If the signatures are certified by the Town Clerk’s office, the select board must schedule a special town meeting within 45 days.
While the three warrant articles submitted by a group of local government activists do not specifically mention the AHS project, one asks for special town meeting to approve a residential property tax cap for seniors that would further hamper the towns’ ability to pay for the $451.5 million project.
“There are 6,000 residents over 65 in Andover are being bulldozed by a $500 million new high school proposal,’ Mike Meyers, who successfully led a similar effort to call a special time meeting two years ago, said in a news release. “Seniors on a fixed income cannot afford an additional $2500-$3000 annual increase in their property taxes.”
A second article would cap healthcare premiums paid by retired town retirees at the same levels paid by active employees. The third article calls for giving petitioners time equal to the time allotted to the town to present petitions at annual and special town meetings. The group also wants a non-binding referendum question asking whether Andover should do away with its open town meeting form of government.
The select board and the school, finance, and AHS building committees are scheduled to meet for a second joint meeting next week to discuss the building committee‘s request for the select board to call a special town meeting to approve $1.3 million for a detailed design of the proposed high school.
The petition filed Wednesday will likely quicken the pace for the quad board to decide whether or not to include the building committee’s article on the warrant. Backers worry special town meeting will view the article as a referendum on the entire project instead of a design that would provide the most accurate cost estimate to date
The town is attempting to move forward with a project that was first discussed seriously in the late 2000s. Last summer the building committee opted to move forward without state assistance from the Massachusetts school building authority. That decision is testing the town’s ability to pay for the project without having its municipal bond rating downgraded.
I support the building of a new AHS over a renovation project. However, the process has been extremely poor and I don’t think less expensive alternative configurations were seriously considered. Why reinvent the wheel when there are examples of more affordable, similar number of students, new high schools being built? I don’t have an answer to that question.
I also think that citizens’ articles should be encouraged, given a fair hearing, and decisions about voting for or against made at Town Meeting (or the ballot box.) I sign local and Commonwealth petitions to get a variety of ideas and people on the ballot.
If we are to build new buildings the buildings need to be basic, not architectural marvels with every bell and whistle. Court yards, swimming pools, skate parks all need to be gone. The costs projected are over the top. John