Opponents Of East Concord Middle School Location File 1,500 Initiative Petition Signatures

CONCORD, NH — Activists who oppose building a new middle school on the city’s east side have filed signatures to have two initiative petitions placed on the November 2024 school ballot to slow down or stop the building project.

Concord Concerned Citizens, a grassroots group of about a dozen activists opposed to the construction of a new Rundlett Middle School on land owned by SAU 8 abutting the Broken Ground Elementary School and Mill Brook Primary School, submitted a little more than 1,500 signatures, well above the 1,000-plus needed, to place two charter change questions on the November ballot.

The signature collection requirement for the ballot questions was about 10 percent of the prior election’s voter turnout.

Jeff Wells, one of the group’s founders, said 193 pages of signatures were filed with the district.

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The first ballot question would add a “mandatory voter approval for school relocation” provision to the charter. The second proposal would require “voter oversight on property transactions” of more than an acre.

More than 1,600 signatures have also been collected for an online petition calling on a revote of the location of the new middle school, which was approved in December 2023, by a 6-3 vote.

Concord Concerned Citizens began circulating the petitions in late June.

Wells said some Merrimack Valley School District residents signed the petitions, but their names were taken out since they lived outside the school district. Residents of MV and Penacook, though, would have to pay for infrastructure costs associated with building the school on the east side, he said.

“They’re really upset about this whole thing,” Wells said. “They are going to end up paying for the infrastructure over there and they are just ripped about it.”

Charlie Russell, a local attorney also involved in the effort, said the district had 20 days to confirm the signatures and get back to the group about any not approved or cleared due to lack of registration or residency outside of SAU 8.

“If they are bad,” he said, “they will give us two days to say we will supplement in another 10 days. According to my figuring, if everything is good, then they have to have a public hearing and notice it by Sept. 25, and they have to start putting it on the ballot.”

Wells said some people who chose not to sign the petitions also stated they could not understand the school board’s reasoning for moving the building’s location from one side of the city to the other. He said “the sudden decision” seemed not to be justified by members of the board who supported the move. Wells said some have openly stated they trusted the judgment of some school board members even if they did not agree with the plan.

Pam Walsh, the school board president, said the district residents had a right to propose amendments. She also said she respected their work and rights even if she disagreed with the proposals.

“The proposed charter amendments would put the district and taxpayers at financial risk and force taxpayers to bear increased costs,” Walsh said. “Rebuilding at the Rundlett site was the more costly and lengthier option. This would potentially add significant additional costs.”

Walsh said the suggestion that the district could “simply plop the design for the east side on the Rundlett site” was “not true.”

She also said approving the first ballot question — voter approval for school relocation, “would mean taxpayers will pay a second time for site work, site studies, and the design of a new middle school, as well as the inflation costs of construction delay.”

Walsh said SAU 8 was “grandfathered in at second on the list for state building aid,” which was expected to cover about 40 percent of the project cost.

“If we are unable to move forward when the state approves funding for building aid, we might not be able to receive building aid,” she added.

Whether voters should have the ability to approve land sales could impose financial costs on the taxpayers, Walsh suggested. Voter approval would lead to district taxpayers bearing “the financial and legal risks of properties it no longer needs and that could be put to other uses.” Good offers that could offset tax bills may also not be taken advantage of, she said.

The New Hampshire Department of Education said the building aid moratorium was lifted in 2020. The moratorium was implemented in 2011, with the state still funding its commitments. One project was funded in 2018. Since 2020, the legislature has appropriated building aid funds in the state budget for school projects.

“However, there is no absolute guarantee that funding will be appropriated for future school projects,” the department said.

Organizers are also collecting signatures for an appeal petition.

That petition has about 1,300 signatures — or around 50 percent of the needed amount, based on the number of registered voters. There is no deadline on that process. If the signatures are gathered, it will force another hearing to revisit the December 2023 decision. It also could be used for future lawsuits against the district.

“We’ll be at that a little longer,” Wells said.

Russell said there was no deadline on the appeal initiative.

Wells said many questions remained, including how much state aid there will be. Part of the current school, on the building’s west side, he noted, was only about 30 years, and could be built upon.

“This idea that kids can’t survive construction doesn’t hold water,” he said.

Russell said the city added additions to Concord High School twice in the 1980s and 1990s. He said new schools were built next to old ones during elementary school consolidation, too.

“They are throwing straws out into the wind to try and tell you why it can’t be done,” Russell said.

Russell added that there was a prior proposal to build the YMCA on the current lot along with a new middle school. The question was: Are the plans suitable for moving to the prior location?, he asked, “Or do they have to hire another architect?”

Wells added, “They are designing a college campus (for middle-schoolers), not a school ... (architecture plans) on a website do not educate a child. What educates a child is curriculum and teachers, not a building.”

According to the district's estimates, repairs to the current Rundlett Middle School are between $8 million and $10 million. Repairing the building would get the district through the 2030 Census to see where thousands of new residents live. Developers have submitted plans for around 3,000 new apartments in the city, two-thirds of which will be built east of the Merrimack River. The district is still paying for the $90.8 million elementary consolidation project through 2041. Prior boards promised property taxpayers there would not be a new middle school until the elementary schools were paid for.

When enrollments are in a nosedive, the entire cost of a full-fledged middle school for the city could be curtailed by building a smaller school at the RMS location — which would be less than the current costs floated for the school at Broken Ground. The district already has rough plans and processes for building a new middle school on its current site and has had them for years. While there will be some inconvenience to everyone — students, educators, administrators, and neighbors, it would be minor when compared to the 30-year tax bill for a nearly quarter of a billion-dollar middle school at a time when taxpayers are paying the highest property taxes ever and the highest school tax rates in a quarter of a century.

Long-term, having SAU 8 merge with SAU 46, the Merrimack Valley School District, located in Penacook, could also save tens of millions.

Patch has requested the amount the district was spending on legal fees to advise the board and district about the two petitions and the appeal. The information was not available at the time of this writing.

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