The Concord Board of Education voted 8-1 last week in favor of building a new middle school, informed by the testimony dozens at a packed hearing where the dominant sentiment was ‘thumbs up.’
Thus-far, the issue of whether or not that should happen has defined the lone officially contested race on the board: the incumbent voted in favor, while her challenger has pushed for a pause.
Challenging incumbent board member Cara Meeker, Jeff Wells led a successful push last year to get the school board to change the location of the school project.
As a candidate, Wells had no vote in the board’s Thursday decision – and wouldn’t singlehandedly be able to undo it if elected – but the project and how it’s been overseen is still the thrust behind his campaign.He feels the board didn’t seriously consider re-using or renovating part of the existing school, insisting that it would save taxpayers substantial costs.
Meeker, running for her second term on the board’s Zone B, has said that while she hears concerns about cost, she believes delaying the project again isn’t the right answer. She said he wants to see costs brought down elsewhere in the school budget to offset the new debt — for instance, the district could bring some special education services, those that are currently provided by pricey third-party companies, in-house.
There will be other major issues in the years to come, including ballooning special education costs, a superintendent search and an uncertain picture of future enrollment.
The candidates — one a retiree and former district parent from Ward 5, the other a south-end resident with kids currently in school — have also teased out their backgrounds beyond their stances on this one issue. Meeker points to her work in the state’s judicial branch and other government administration as the underpinning for her dedication to clear policy and process. Wells lists his decades of work in IT among the experiences that have shown him how to deliver work within set parameters.
The board’s vote last week was less than two weeks from election day. The November ballot will be voters’ first chance, by proxy, to endorse the board’s decision to build or reject it.
On his website, Wells asked voters to make a choice between three options: exhausting the board’s cash-on-hand to make small fixes to the current school; going for a renovation or addition-with-renovation approach, which he’s guessed would cost around $80 million; or moving ahead with the $155 million budget the board approved. He said he’s heard from few who support the third option.
“I want people to voice those opinions to me and to everyone what they want to do in this situation,” he said at a Monitor candidate forum. “It’s not my opinion, it’s it’s what they want to do.”
Meeker criticized Wells for this discourse, framing it as a false promise to voters.
“I would love to be able to walk around town and tell you that I can build a school for $80 million,” Meeker said. “That would make it so much easier to get this project across the finish line.”
The board has looked into renovation, she added, and found that it would likely cost more and take longer.
“We have yet to find a solution, hybrid or no, that gets us to that price tag,” she said.
Wells sees the board as either unable or unwilling to press its contracted construction and architectural firms for enough details and enough savings. As a result, his view is that the board, and Concord taxpayers, are getting played.
“I was a consultant for ten years. I’m not an architect, never been an architect, but I know the game they’re playing,” he said. “At some point you have to come to a consensus or an understanding on how much things are going to cost.”
Meeker countered that the board and its committees have scrutinized the numbers, but there simply isn’t a practical way to reuse Rundlett. There’s room for further cuts, she said, but in her view, Concord teachers and students need a new building.
“We are talking about modern plumbing, modern electrical, ADA accessible bathrooms for wheelchair users,” she said. “I really want to push back against this idea that we’re doing something overly fancy. We are confronting a very difficult pricing environment to build a school that is filled with necessities for students and teachers.”
Their back and forth echoed the dialogue between a group co-founded by Wells, the Concord Concerned Citizens, and the school board over the last two years.
The Concerned Citizens have framed the board as failing to engage its constituents, negligent in its management of the project and ignorant of what its members are asking of their fellow taxpayers. The board has shown exasperation with and resentment of the group’s advocacy, and it hasn’t found a way to convincingly communicate with the group’s members.
To turn down the temperature, Wells said he would urge the board to simply have these debates more openly. Meeker also sees conversations as the key and said zooming out from tense debates and disagreeing respectfully about what to do next is the way forward.
To read more of the Monitor’s election coverage, visit our Concord Votes page at https://www.concordmonitor.com/concord-votes/.
Editor’s note: an earlier version of this story was posted online before the board’s Oct. 23 middle school vote. It has since been updated.
