The following was submitted by Maria Libby, Five Town CSD Superintendent

Transparency, being upfront and honest about our goings-on, and keeping the public well informed about our schools is a priority in the Five Town CSD. We communicate with our staff, students, parents, and community a lot. That ethic of transparency is what motivated us to go to referendum for the recent HVAC/Siding and Windows/Turf Field projects.

The timing was unavoidable, even though we knew it was less than ideal. In order to meet the Maine Municipal Bond Bank deadlines for a Summer 2025 start once we had the relevant financial information, we had to call a special election. Despite the critical speculation, a significant portion of voters turn out compared to a typical June budget vote. In fact, in Hope, more people voted in January on that referendum than did at last June’s annual town vote!

The truth is, we were not required to put the HVAC or Siding/Windows projects out to public vote. Maine schools are allowed to do a tax-exempt lease-purchase for energy conservation projects. Most districts in Maine choose the lease purchase route to avoid a public vote. We opted to go to referendum to be as transparent as possible with our voters. The president of the engineering company we were working with told us we are the most transparent district he has ever worked, and they have done hundreds of these projects. 

What we overwhelmingly heard from voters at the polls in January and shortly thereafter is that including the turf field was a mistake. People favored the HVAC and Siding/Windows project but voted against it because of the turf field.

The board is not going to further pursue converting the Don Palmer field to artificial turf, or any other athletic field project at this time.However, the other two projects need to be completed. Given what seemed to be widespread support for those two projects, the board has decided to move forward with what is typically the traditional route – a tax-exempt lease purchase.

There are sound reasons for this that benefit taxpayers. We missed the deadline for a spring bond issue and feel we cannot wait another year to begin these projects because waiting will cost our taxpayers an extra $75,000 - $100,000 per year in loan payments due to increased construction costs. No one knows where interest rates will be a year from now, but they are unlikely to be lower. It is fiscally irresponsible to wait, and we have a mechanism to move forward with these two projects now. 

Therefore, the board is planning to enter into a tax-exempt lease purchase agreement with a bank that will lock us into a 20-year term at 5.245%.

The first payment is $299,000 and will decrease annually as the interest payment goes down. The cost will cover the HVAC project and a third of the Siding/Windows project.

The building envelope will take three summers to complete, and we will do a separate lease purchase for the latter two thirds as they come. Voters will stay have a voice in this decision through our regular budget process because we incorporated the $299,000 payment as part of our overall FY26 budget that will go to voters at the Public Hearing in May and on the ballot in June.