Millis Votes to Fund New School One Voter Files Suit against Town to Save Trees

In a Spring Town Meeting vote on Monday, June 5, 2017, by a vote of 460 to 72, the town of Millis approved the appropriation of $51,200,000 for the construction of a new elementary school, following the passing of a debt exclusion override vote at town election the previous month. The Town of Millis will borrow the entire amount, ultimately bearing the cost of $30,250,000, reimbursed for $20,950,710 by the Massachusetts School Building Authority. The borrowing will be repaid though taxation of over thirty years.
According to its website at www.millisschoolproject.org, Elementary School Building Committee is proceeding to the next step of the process, which is Design Development (DD) phase. The next step of the phase will be for the ESBC to hire a Construction Management firm that will eventually build the new school and site work once the design is complete.
One citizen, John Fitzgerald, of Millis, stood up at Town Meeting to make a motion to table Article 13, arguing that the town will be losing a gem with the bulldozing of the pine knoll at the Town Park to make way for the new building. In his motion, he asked that the Town be given time to deliberate about other possible sites. The motion to table the discussion did not pass at the meeting, and the vote on Article 13 proceeded.
On June 19h, Fitzgerald filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against the town, alleging that the moderator misled citizens during the town meeting, and that parliamentary rules were violated.
After the motion was made to table Article 13, Fitzgerald argues, the moderator consulted with another person, returned to the microphone, and stated, “And just so you know, if the vote is to lay it aside, the issue is done.” He added, “Because once Town Meeting adjourns, it’s all over. That means the state funding will probably be gone and whatever other things were in place would stop.”
Fitzgerald asserts on his Fundly page, https://fundly.com/save-the-millis-town-park, that this statement misled voters into thinking that approval of the motion to table Article 13 would equate to a “no” vote on the article, creating an impression that millions of dollars in state grant aid would be lost.
Fitzgerald’s lawsuit seeks a special town meeting in which voters would deliberate all possible sites for a school.
The Elementary School Building Committee had no comment on the pending lawsuit.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority website states rules that communities that have been invited to enter into a Project Scope and Budget Agreement with the Massachusetts School Building Authority must vote to authorize the project, and the vote should not occur until after MSBA has approved the project scope and budget. It further states that those that proceed with “studying, planning, designing, renovating or constructing a school facility without the collaboration and approval of the MSBA will not be eligible for MSBA funding.” More, MSBA’s process requires that town votes on school projects need to be a “separate, stand-alone vote, solely for the purposes of one Project,” and that vote must be “project specific.”
For more information on the process, visit www.massschoolbuildings.org/guidelines/votes, and click on Project Scope Budget Vote Bulletin for Cities and Towns.