OPINION - "The Happy Path"

Medfield MA

30 September, 2021

9:26 AM

Description

Letter of Opinion - Medfield resident, Bill Werner To the Medfield Community, This fall, we will vote on the new school at the Wheelock campus. The happy path is, as a town, we vote yes and approve moving forward with a new school in the fall of 2024. The other path, at best, is ripe with risks and uncertainty. At worst, it may set the town back decades. This is not hyperbole; I will try to explain. Regardless of how you intend to vote, please show up at Town Meeting. Approximately 5% of voters participated in Town Meeting this past spring. The worst outcome we can achieve as a town is a split vote with low turnout. We owe it to ourselves and the future of our town to show up and register where we stand. And when you show up, the simple question to ask yourself is "is a no vote worth the risk?" The first risk is that we turn down the current proposal for an alternative that doesn't exist. A "Dale at Dale" plan is the furthest from a sure thing, and likely has a lower chance of success than the current plan. I would never vote yes on a "Dale at Dale" plan. I wouldn't want my children to be displaced in modulars for their 4th/5th grade years when there is a great alternative that would prevent that. I could never vote yes to any plan that asked my neighbors' children to do the same. The next risk is time. Understand that any proposal to change the location would require us to start over with the MSBA. The earliest a "Dale at Dale" plan could get done is the fall of 2027. More likely it would be 2028 or 2029. That is an awfully long time to try and sweat out the current Dale facility. It is a long time to stifle progress. It introduces massive risks; we could be left throwing good money after bad to keep Dale operational. Maybe the biggest of risks is cost. The two single largest costs of this project won't be labor or steel but interest and inflation. Vote yes and we take advantage of some of the lowest interest rates in history. If we wait, and interest rates go up by 1%, the cost of the project goes up by $12 million (or more precisely, $11,999,912.60). Consider a "Dale at Dale" plan we attempt to execute for 2028, where construction costs inflate by 5% annually and interest rates go up 1.75% (per Fed projections). Then, project costs go up $45 million. The scariest of scenarios is we are forced to move forward without state funding. That sends the $45 million bill up to $84 million. No one knows what will ultimately happen with rates and inflation, but the happy path takes all this risk off the table. The reality is, waiting for any "Dale at Dale" plan could literally mortgage our future and set the town back 20 years, and with it, all the projects that could have been done with the money we will have wasted. There are other risks to consider, maybe the greatest of which is the risks that whatever may be important to you doesn't get addressed because we are paralyzed by inaction on this topic. Our time is too valuable to spend the next four years redoing and re-debating what has already been done. I understand and defend the "Dale at Dale" organizers' right to fight for what they believe in. As a town, we have to ask ourselves if their vision of perfect should be the enemy of a really good Wheelock campus plan. You have to ask if the risks are worth it. You have to ask if pausing now could likely wind up costing all of us a better future. I'm going to take the risk off the table. I'm taking the happy path and voting yes. I hope you will join me. Bill Werner, Garry Drive, Medfield