Concord Resident: Price Tag Of New Middle School ‘Appalling’; Makes Me ‘Physically Sick’

CONCORD, NH — “It made me physically sick, and I’m not saying that in any kind of metaphoric way. I lost sleep thinking about this. It is probably the most outrageous thing I have ever seen.”

Those were the comments of Chris O’Connor, a resident who moved to the city about seven years ago, during a Concord Board of Education meeting Monday addressing the nearly a quarter of a billion-dollar middle school project recently approved to be built on the city’s east side.

O’Connor spoke during one of the two public comment periods at the board’s monthly meeting. He readily admitted he had not been paying attention to issues surrounding SAU 8 or the middle school project until a few weeks ago when he sent letters to members. O’Connor said he was shocked by what he saw with the project's financials.

The price tag for the new middle school is around $176 million. While there is 40 percent in state aid expected, the school district would still have to borrow more than $100 million. Even at 4 percent, the final cost of the building will be around $242 million or about a quarter of a billion dollars.

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His comments were made around 75 minutes into the meeting.

At a special meeting on Dec. 6, 2023, school board members voted 6-3 to continue with the project and site the new middle school on the east side of the city, at the Broken Ground Elementary and Mill Brook Primary schools parcel. The district owns 59 acres of nearly vacant land and the city and district own another 121 acres abutting the 59-acre parcel and several single-family homes. City officials have not confirmed whether there are restrictions on the jointly owned property.

The current RMS site is around 20 acres with a tiny sliver of wetlands.

According to the district minutes, only a handful of people at the hearing spoke about the enormous cost of the school. Most residents believed the school should be built but at the current site.

At the board’s Dec. 4, 2023, meeting, six residents expressed support for building the school on the current site, while one, Stacey Brown, also a Ward 5 city councilor, raised concerns about the cost. On Dec. 6, 2023, hearing, she supported building the school on its current site. Brown attended Monday’s meeting but did not speak.

O’Connor said only three school board members responded to his concerns, prompting him to attend the meeting. Those board members, though, confirmed to him that the price of the school was too high. During the election season last year, some school board candidates noted the $176 million price was for all the bells and whistles. So, there may be some scaling back of the price, at some point.

O’Connor said he appreciated all the time board members gave to advise professional staff leading the district. But, he said, “There’s part of me just feels … there’s something in me that feels like this a con job. When you put out a number like that … and even if you cut it back by $25 million, you still have such an outrageous number that it is appalling. It is obscene.”

O’Connor said he believed “in good education and well-paid teachers,” but the price tag did not make sense, especially when considering other projects. He pointed to the South Portland, Maine, middle school project, which was larger, with space for hundreds of more children than a new middle school in Concord, cost less to build.

“I don’t think things cost that much more in Concord, New Hampshire, than they do in Maine,” he said.

Maine documents online said the school was about $138 million before interest. The city in Maine had the school on its November 2019 ballot, and the voters approved it. The school opened in May.

Unlike all but a handful of school districts in the Northeast, SAU 8 has its own taxing authority and no oversight of a mayor or voters via town meeting ballots or referendums due to its autonomous charter. District residents were also promised during the elementary school consolidation process that no middle school would be built until the bonding for consolidation was paid off. That occurs in 2041.

O’Connor also wondered how Nashua managed to build a new middle school and renovate others, too, for less money. He admitted their decision to build was made before inflation hit during the past few years. According to the Nashua School District, the city’s board of aldermen approved bonding of $118 million in late 2019 for the projects. The new middle school portion of the tab was $78 million before interest — or about $12 million less than a new middle school in Concord was estimated to be four years ago.

The Nashua School District is the second largest in the state; SAU 8 is fifth. Gate City residents also received a property tax break this year and now pay about $10 less per thousand of assessed value than Concord despite having higher median salaries and a lower poverty rate than the capital city, according to the U.S. Census. Taxes in the Merrimack Valley School District also went down this year. But in Concord, the tax rate increased to the highest level in 27 years, even after the district received more than $6 million more than expected in state adequacy aid.

“I’m just flabbergasted,” O’Connor said, noting he lived in “a modest house” but was paying more than $8,000 annually in property taxes and was not independently wealthy. He said if a comparison was made to a vehicle, he believed “public education children deserved a well-maintained Toyota or Ford or something like that,” not “a Lamborghini or a Ferrari.”

O’Connor said he was “horrified, quite frankly, to see how few people are here.” He thought the room would be “crammed full of people tonight.”

“I just hope that, moving forward, that this is scaled back to something that makes some common sense,” O’Connor said. “I hope you and I trust you will all keep in mind that these numbers are outrageous. It has to be scaled back to something that is reasonable.”

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