GORHAM — The Town Council Tuesday rejected sending a $1.8 million dollar request to a June referendum to ask voters to support constructing infrastructure to add three leased portable buildings at Narragansett Elementary School.

Councilors said they wanted to revisit the costs of leasing the portables versus buying them.

The $1.8 million was for infrastructure only and would not have included the lease costs of the portable buildings that would house classrooms and a cafeteria to ease a projected coming enrollment crunch in the town’s three elementary schools.

“I am somewhat disappointed,” Superintendent Heather Perry said Wednesday.  “However, I do understand that the Town Council overall supports addressing our facilities needs in order to address our growing student population.

The proposed referendum would not have asked voters to borrow the funds because money for the project would have been included in the school budget. Perry said the referendum was sought to comply with provisions of the town charter regarding large expenditures.

Councilors Paul Smith, Virginia Wilder Cross, Ronald Shepard and Lee Pratt opposed the referendum measure. Council Chairman Ben Hartwell and Councilor James Hager voted for it. Council Vice Chairwoman Suzanne Phillips was absent.

“I am not against the portables, but I am against the town leasing them,” Pratt said Wednesday.

Pratt agrees portables are the best way now to fix the problem. “What my concern is leasing these, portables then adding all the value of wall board, floors, ceilings, electrical, plumbing and sprinklers plus the labor to do so, then paying fair market value to purchase these at the end of the lease. I believe in the end we would spend more going this route than just purchasing these units and retaining the equity in town,” he said.

Cross said she wasn’t opposed to the use of portables or “the money it will take to prepare for them,” but she’d “like to go back to the table to examine the cost of purchasing rather than leasing the units as part of the package.”

School Committee Chairman Darryl Wright has reached out to Town Council Chairman Benjamin Hartwell for a joint meeting to discuss the proposal again “to try and figure out a way to move forward in addressing our growing population needs, Perry said.

“There is  no question we must do something to address this issue and soon,” she said.

Perry said Great Falls, Narragansett and Village elementary schools will be full to capacity next year. “After 2019-20, we are then due to add 30 students in 2020-21 at K-5 and then in the next year (2021-22) another 75 students,”Perry said.  

Within the next few years, the expected increase of elementary students in Gorham is 175 to 330 more students, according to a 2018 study by New England School Development Council.    

The Narragansett portables project would be built in phases over two years, Norm Justice, the school district’s facility director, said Tuesday. Site work would have been scheduled for the upcoming school year.

Gorham also could be positioned in the future to receive state funds for an elementary school project,  Perry told town councilors.

In other action, the Town Council Tuesday unanimously 6-0 backed amending a previously dropped Middle School impact fee on new homes that now goes to the Planning Board for a public hearing and its recommendation.

The town had enacted a middle school impact fee in 2002 to help pay for it but repealed it in 2009.  The middle school opened in 2003 and was constructed for a capacity of 900. It housed 618 in 2010. Enrollment this year is 627 and is projected to hit 824 in 10 years, according to town statistics.

The formula for impact fees would be based on the number of bedrooms in new homes, Town Planner Tom Poirier said following Tuesday’s meeting. For example, an impact fee for a single-family home with two bedrooms could be $425.

Robert Lowell can be reached at 780-9089 or email rlowell@keepmecurrent.com.

Narragansett Elementary School in Gorham