AUBURN – City Councilor Leroy G. Walker Sr. has a deal for the School Committee. If they can guarantee that no Auburn resident loses his home over the next five years because of a higher tax rate, he’ll get behind the plan to build a new Edward Little High School.

It was that kind of meeting.

At the joint meeting of the council and the School Committee on Wednesday night, one thing became clear: just about everybody wants the new school as proposed, with its two-field athletic complex and 1,200-seat auditorium.

They just don’t want to pay full price for it, estimated at $125.5 million.

Of that amount, $109 million would be paid by the state and $16.5 million by local taxpayers, according to Harriman architect Lisa Sawin.

A few councilors said Wednesday night that some homeowners won’t be able to afford the estimated $104 slapped onto the annual tax bill for a property valued at $150,000.

Walker said he has been talking to Auburn residents, many of them older folks living on limited budgets. Just about all of them would love to see the new high school built as planned.

“They said, ‘we want a new high school,'” Walker said, “‘but we can’t afford that.’ They said, ‘we might as well pack our bags. We might as well move out.'”

Councilor Belinda A. Gerry said she is hearing similar fears from residents about rising taxes. She can’t get behind the current plan, she said, until more serious attempts are made to bring down the costs associated with the new school and to prevent the tax rate from soaring ever higher.

“I don’t think we’re holding the line low enough so that the average taxpayer can live here,” Gerry said.

The council is expected to vote on its support for the project March 11, two days before a community straw poll March 13.

The previous estimate of $23 million shouldered by Auburn taxpayers has been pared down to about $16 million, while keeping all the extra school components previously proposed, including the athletic field and auditorium.

Several councilors said they would like to see that number dropped even lower, including Councilor Andrew Titus who said he’d like to see the local costs dropped to $10 million.

Councilor Alfreda M. Fournier said she’d be comfortable if they could get the figure down to $12 million.

Many councilors Wednesday night also discussed the potential benefits of trying to get some of the money through donors and fundraisers. Why make the taxpayer bear all of the pain, they wondered, when some local businesses and residents might be more than willing to pitch in?

The gathering didn’t get outright emotional until School Superintendent Kady Grondin said her piece in support of a new high school.

“We have, in this community the chance of a lifetime,” Grondin said. “We have been committed from the beginning that this will be a community high school. We have been open-minded. We have been listening and listening. This is not just a high school for our students, it’s a high school for our community. We are building a future.”

Grondin said if city councilors want to see fundraising efforts to allay some of the costs, building a great high school is the way to inspire donors. She also reminded the group that students and teachers are occupying a school with no auditorium, with a windowless cafeteria in the basement, with only one science class and a wide range of other problems.

“We should expect more,” Grondin said, her voice rising. “We deserve more and this community deserves more.”

Building a state-of-the-art high school, Grondin went on, is a way to attract more people who want to live in Auburn and to do business here.

“This is our opportunity, I feel very passionately about this,” she said. “The students and their families deserve this.”

An audience of about 20 people, quiet until that point of the meeting, burst into loud and sustained applause.

The plan will go to the building committee, with a couple recommendations that would bring the local costs down to around $15 million. Mayor Jason Levesque said those recommendations would also tie some of the extra school features, such as landscaping, directly to fundraising. The building committee will meet with the City Council on March 11, when the council will vote on whether to support the project.

“If it passes,” the mayor said, “great.”

If it doesn’t pass, though, Grondin fears trouble. She said earlier in the day that a no vote by the council would send the wrong signal to state education officials, even if the School Committee and Auburn residents vote in favor of the project at the straw poll  March 13.

If residents back the proposal, a referendum will be held in June.

Levesque said that the hope is that by the March 11 meeting, the local cost of the project could be brought down a little more, to around $15 million. He would like to see strong incentives for the School Department to use fundraising efforts to come up with roughly $3.5 million to offset that figure even further.

In the end, the mayor said, hopefully a happy middle ground can be attained bridging those who want the best possible school whatever the cost and those who are fretting about the project’s impact on the tax rate.

“This is all about consensus building,” Levesque said. “Emotional arguments have a place, but not now. Right now it’s about what we can afford.”

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