The Manhasset School District Board of Education on Thursday unveiled a list of projects and cost projections included in a long-range planning committee’s report on a possible capital referendum to take place during the next several years.
Though district officials said they do not have a price tag or definitive list of necessary projects yet in mind, Manhasset Superintendent of Schools Charles Cardillo said the committee identified 46 potential projects to Manhasset’s facilities and infrastructure estimated at $30,737,421.
Cardillo said improvements to the district’s arts and music programs were deemed the most important to the committee, with projects to improve the district’s cafeterias and athletic programs also ranked highly. District officials said the majority of the work being considered would take place from June 2016 through August 2017.
“We have a world-class choral program, we have a world-class music program, we have a world-class arts program, but we don’t have world-class facilities for the arts program, and that really resonated as we went building to building,” Cardillo said.
The long-range planning committee toured Manhasset’s three school buildings throughout the spring and early summer with district facilities director Armand Markarian, district architect John Grillo and district administrators to determine which projects were of highest priority to the district.
From there, the committee compiled a list of projects and organized them using a 1-5 scale – with 5 being the most important – based on significance and potential cost estimates while also taking into account the potentiality for increased student enrollment in the coming years.
The committee’s list includes 34 projects deemed “important, very important and most important,” according to Cardillo’s presentation materials, and 12 projects and seven alternatives that were not as pressing.
Four projects – including the expansion and reconstruction of the Munsey Park Elementary School kitchen and cafeteria and the reconstruction of science classrooms, the digital telephone infrastructure and electrical systems at Shelter Rock Elementary School – were ranked at 4.5 or higher, with costs estimated at $5.15 million, Cardillo said.
An additional 30 projects were ranked between 3.0 and 4.9 and valued at more than $20 million, he said.
Additional projects in the second tier of the facilities committee’s list included the installation of air conditioning in large public meeting spaces throughout the district, the conversion of the district’s bus garage for classroom space or administrative offices, infrastructure improvements to ceilings, floors and lighting and the replacement of the district’s turf athletic fields.
Rosemary Johnson, the district’s assistant superintendent for business, said that if the district were to replace the $500,000 in debt expiring at the conclusion of the 2014-15 school year with a new $6 million bond in June 2015 and a $21 million bond in 2016 – representative of the $27 million in projects prioritized between 3.0 and 5 – the tax levy for an average home in Manhasset valued at $1.016 million would increase by $225 per year.
But, Johnson said, the $27 million depicted in her presentation Thursday was used solely as an example to explain how the average tax levy could increase during the lifetime of the bonds.
“It is just a scenario so that people can put it in some level of context,” she said.
Cardillo said the district’s next step would be to determine whether it would want to propose a bond for a community vote in December 2014 or May 2015 and begin determining which suggested projects would be included in its capital plan.
The Manhasset School District completed $31.85 million in capital improvements from 2006-13 as part of a previous referendum and secured $2.3 million in private funding for some of those projects, a practice Cardillo said he’d like to see continue with a future bond.
The board announced prior to the start of the presentation that it had received up to $45,000 in funding for the refurbishment of one of the Manhasset Secondary School’s community centers for the construction of an art gallery and up to $250,000 for what officials called “a mutually agreed upon future capital project.”
“It’s so awesome, there’s no way to describe it, no way to verbalize it,” said Carlo Prinzo, the board’s vice president. “It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Whatever it is, it will benefit the kids. I’m overwhelmed.”
The School Community Association has also endowed up to $12,000 for the construction of the art gallery’s entrance doors, and its Senior Frolic Committee has donated up to $15,000 for landscaping and tree upgrades at the secondary school.
“It’s great community organizations like you that make our schools as great as they are,” board President Regina Rule said.
