The warrant will ask voters to appropriate $210,000 to purchase the land.
By Jim Smedley
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – The state Board of Education on Wednesday unanimously approved the site planned for the Paris elementary school.

“I will ask the school board to authorize a warrant and referendum vote to purchase the site,” said SAD 17 Superintendent Mark Eastman. “The referendum will allow us to buy the land and use bond funds, not local funds. The interest that we pay on the bond notes will be a project cost.”

The warrant will ask voters to appropriate $210,000 from the district’s undesignated fund to purchase the 16.2 acres of land on the corner of High Street and Hathaway Road. It further authorizes the board of directors to issue bonds or notes to refund the undesignated fund balances.

“The voter approval allows us to pay costs associated with the evaluating and acquiring of the land,” Eastman said. “That cost will be in the $20,000 range at this point. There is still more work to do related to DEP (Department of Environmental Protection), not a lot more, but some more.

“We have already jumped through most of the hoops,” he said.

At a Sept. 16 public hearing, where the site was backed by a 58-0 straw vote, project architect Rick Malm said if the state school board approves the site, the design would be done by December of this year.

Malm, an architect with Lewis & Malm Architects, Bucksport, said the final plan would be ready in January and must receive Planning Board and state board approval.

“We’ll take it to the state in February (2004), it will be approved in March and then the local vote will be in May,” Malm said.

He said he hoped the construction bidding would be able to be held in February of 2005 and occupancy in the spring of 2006.

jsmedley@sunjournal.com

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