Final Total Cost For Cole, Other Projects About $50 Million

At the Town Council meeting Monday night, members voted to approve the sale of school building improvement bonds not to exceed $40 million. Added to an earlier approval of the sale of $10.5 million in bonds, the town is now just one step from fully bonding for the projects that include the .

The date of that final step — sale of the actual bonds — should be announced later this week, according to Town Manager Bill Sequino. The final tally, he said, is estimated to be about $50 million dollars, $2 million less that the maximum voters approved to spend in 2008. Sequino said the savings come from three different sources.

First, the projects themselves — which included, in addition to Cole, , and — came in a total of $613,000 under budget.

Second, the cost of issuing the bonds is anticipated to be less than expected. And, third, the interest, which had been estimated at 5 percent, looks likely to come in at 4 percent.

Nonetheless, savings would have been greater had the School Committee and Town Council not voted to approve additional projects, including a , and .

Officials have said that. Both the renovation of the entrance the EGHS and the new Cole Middle School cost millions less than originally estimated. That led the School Building Committee to return to its original list of projects and of what the additional bond money could be used for.

Part of the selling point was a promise of state reimbursement of 40 percent. That reimbursement comes over the life of the bonds, Sequino explained Monday night. Each year as the town pays off a portion of the bond, the state will reimburse the town 40 percent of the town’s expenditure.

At this point, almost all the projects at the schools are complete. after a fast-moving construction effort that started in September. The only project far from completion is at Meadowbrook. Real work there will not begin until this summer and is expected to run through summer 2013. According to Sequino, however, the budget for that project is set, so it will not change the amount of money that needs to be bonded.