Lying awake in the middle of the night, Chris O’Connor felt physically sick. He had one number he couldn’t get out of his mind: $176 million – the approved cost of a new middle school in Concord.

In December, the Concord School Board voted to build a new middle school in East Concord, next to the Broken Ground and Mill Brook schools, over rebuilding at the existing Rundlett site in the South End.

In the Concord High School auditorium, about 100 residents filled the seats for the December meeting, the last of the outgoing school board. With the middle school decision on the agenda, the meeting was moved to the auditorium to accommodate the anticipated crowd.

At the first meeting of the year in January, back at the district’s regular board room, O’Connor sat in the audience, in disbelief that only a half-dozen people showed up alongside him.

“The price is so stunningly high that I just would have thought more people would be getting in line to talk about it,” he said.

In the public comment portion of the meeting, O’Connor shared his dismay over the project’s price tag. With examples of new construction for schools in Nashua and South Portland, Maine – where middle schools were built in each location for under $100 million – he urged the board to reconsider the cost.

“I’m not opposed to good education or well-paid teachers or even building a new middle school, but when I’ve looked up some other middle schools that have been built recently, the price is just out of whack,” he said.

When O’Connor moved to Concord nearly eight years ago, he didn’t pay close attention to local politics. With no children in the school district, he assumed school board members would do what’s best for the community, with the financial burden of their decisions top of mind.

But as his property tax bills increased – and will continue to rise with this new project – he began to tune in.

Ahead of the January meeting, O’Connor emailed school board members – including outgoing members Jonathan Weinberg and Tom Croteau – again expressing his outrage for the project’s estimated cost.

Three members replied, he said, including Weinberg. All were in agreement that the cost would need to come down as plans progressed. Weinberg explained as well that the estimates for the new school encapsulated everything the district wanted in a new school, essentially a dream middle school. From these initial plans, the board would work to cut back.

Still, to cut back the cost by 10%, Concord taxpayers would be looking at a nearly $150 million proposal. No matter the scope of cuts, O’Connor still has questions.

“Why would you put a number like that in front of the public when you know it was a fantasy number?” said O’Connor.

The irony with his campaign is that O’Connor does not want to start a crusade against the school district. But in the debate over where to put the school, he feels the price tag for both projects was masked.

A vote on the bond to pay for the new school will come before the board in the future as the details of the project emerge.

“This is the last way I want to be spending my time. I say it over and over again to people: I’m a lifelong Democrat, I believe in good schools,” he said. “People seemed much more concerned with where the school is going to be than the price.”

But in doing more research on the makeup and role of the school board, O’Connor was shocked to learn that Concord is unique because the school board is autonomous – approving and managing their own budget, which is currently $100 million – without a vote from residents or any veto power from a city council or mayor.

“They can basically come up with any budget they want, and it’s not subject to public approval or rejection,” he said. “These folks have this tremendous amount of power that I was completely unaware of and I suspect most people are unaware of.

“And that’s pretty alarming to me.”

O’Connor plans to continue to attend the monthly school board meetings. He’s heard from one person about starting a petition to reassess the cost, and he wonders with two new members sworn in this month – Jessica Campbell and Liz Boucher – if the new board could reverse the vote.

“My intention is to keep going to meetings, see if the votes against Broken Ground might take that up again. And just continue to hammer away what in the world could possibly cost so much,” he said. “I don’t want to be in conflict with people who seem to want to have good schools. I just don’t want to be priced out of Concord, either.”