Longmeadow voters cast their ballots in a referendum on using a debt override to pay for the new middle school.
Reminder Publishing photo by Sarah Heinonen
LONGMEADOW — Voters in Longmeadow supported a debt exclusion to pay for the $151.59 million middle school, with a vote of 2,130-1,360.
The new construction will replace the aging Williams and Glenbrook middle schools and educate all 665 students in grades 6-8 under one roof.
With no other items on the ballot, the question of whether to fund the school through a debt exclusion brought out 26.7% of the town’s 13,056 registered voters. A debt exclusion allows a municipality to temporarily raise taxes above the normal maximum of 2.5% of the previous year plus new growth. They are specifically used to cover debt service on capital expenses and must be approved at the ballot box by more than 50% of voters.
Prior to the ballot question, residents at the Sept. 9 Town Meeting, in their role as the municipality’s legislative branch, backed the plan for the school project with a vote of 1,374-402. In the lead up to the Town Meeting and special election, a vocal portion of the town campaigned in favor of renovating the existing schools instead of building a combined one.
Williams and Glenbrook are 66 years old and 57 years old, respectively, and the town has sought solutions to the deteriorating buildings since 2007. After some starts and stops, the middle school was accepted into the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s program in 2022. The MSBA, which is funded through the state’s sales tax, reimburses municipalities for a portion of school repairs and construction, but the process is notoriously long, regimented and bureaucratic.
Had the town voted against the project at the Town Meeting or against the debt exclusion at the polls, the MSBA would have dropped Longmeadow from its list of projects, requiring the town to start the process over.
The MSBA has agreed to reimburse the town for $54.8 million of the project, with Longmeadow taxpayers left to cover the remaining $96.8 million. At Town Meeting, Town Manager Lyn Simmons said the average property owner would pay an extra $247 per $100,000 in property value. The annual property taxes on a home at the town’s median value of $596,300 will increase by $1,462 in the first year of the bond and reduce in subsequent years. Once the bond is repaid, the extra taxes will be eliminated.
The middle school building project now moves into the construction phase, with a ground-breaking set for July 2026. The new building will be erected on the campus where the athletic fields are currently. Once the new school is finished and students and staff move over in fall 2028, the existing Williams Middle School building will be demolished, and a turf field, parking and landscaping will be created in their place.
