By Brian Genest – 8-26
Apparently, somebody in Dracut needs to learn how elections work — and it’s not the voters. Election integrity doesn’t appear to be on the School Committee’s agenda or anywhere in the School Department’s curriculum. Instead of accepting the answer voters gave them, the School Committee has been looking for a way to keep the $177 million Campbell School project alive.
After the debt exclusion for the project failed at the ballot box, the committee held two special emergency meetings to pursue a four-month extension for grant funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority. Despite rejection by the voters and Selectmen Josh Taylor, Don Plummer and Tony Archinski voting against asking for an extension and pursuing another election, the tone-deaf school committee was still full speed ahead.
School Committee member Allison Stilian was the lone member of her board to oppose the extension. The rest — Chairman Rob Sheppard, Allison Volpe, Dr. Linda Trouville and Dr. Rebecca Duda — apparently decided that “no” was merely a suggestion. Translation: The school committee knows better than the voters.
Then came Superintendent Steven Stone’s July 7th letter to the MSBA. Stone asked for an extension “so that the Town and the District may seek renewed local approval for this urgently needed project.” He also wrote that the $177 million project appropriation was approved by Town Meeting voters on June 1st.
Talk about a creative interpretation of what happened that night. The School Committee and supporters of the project repeatedly told Town Meeting voters that the vote that evening was only to send the debt exclusion question to a town-wide ballot, where the entire electorate would decide whether taxpayers should borrow the money. It wasn’t an approval of the project or the funding, they insisted.
Then that special election happened. The voters decided. They said no. But Stone’s letter offers another explanation. He claims that the failed ballot vote “was not a rejection of the educational need for the project or the quality of the proposed solution. Rather, the failure appears to have resulted primarily from confusion and concern regarding the projected tax impact on Dracut homeowners…”
Stone listed 10 bullet points outlining what he believed needed to be addressed, including concerns about the tax impact, confusion over the project’s financial details, misinformation and communication problems. The explanation seems to be that voters were confused, the numbers were confusing, the town’s communications were confusing and misinformation was everywhere. Translation: Everyone is responsible for the project’s failure except Stone himself.
Stone then laid out the plan for a second election. “Should the MSBA grant an extension,” he wrote, “the District plans to make every effort to remedy the above-mentioned reasons and seek support from Dracut residents for a second special election.”
But here’s what matters: the second election would be on the exact same $177 million Campbell School proposal. That’s the project the MSBA grant funding is tied to. There is no alternate plan waiting in the wings.
Stone sent the extension letter to Town Manager Kate Hodges and asked her to sign it before he submitted it to the MSBA. Hodges politely reminded him that the Selectmen had instructed her not to sign the request. So Stone sent it to the MSBA anyway.
Then the MSBA responded. The agency wrote that it had received “other communications that conflict with this request for additional time.” Translation: We heard from town voters in the majority, too.
The MSBA then delivered the line that should put a tombstone on this project: “Given the overwhelming capital needs of school districts across the Commonwealth and the MSBA’s limited capital funds, the MSBA cannot indefinitely reserve funds allocated for a Project that lacks local support.”
Translation: May the Taj Mahal School rest in peace.
The MSBA gave Dracut until August 31st for Hodges to sign the extension request or notify the agency that the grant application was being withdrawn.
So here we are. The voters said no. The Selectmen said no. The Town Manager declined to sign. The MSBA said it cannot indefinitely reserve funding for a project that lacks local support. And the School Committee still tried to keep it alive.
The Campbell School project didn’t fail because democracy malfunctioned. It failed because the people who were asked to pay for it said no. That’s not misinformation. That’s not confusion. That’s an election.
If the School Committee wants to make its case again someday, it has every right to do so. But first, it might want to learn the hardest lesson of all: Sometimes the answer is no.
— Brian Genest is the producer and host of Eye On Dracut, winner of the Hometown Media Award for News. Follow online at Facebook.com/EyeOnDracut. ◊