GRA: Planning Board Sends School District "back to the drawing board"


Dedicated to Securing A Truly Perfect Location for Goffstown's Future Kindergarten & Elementary Schools

August 15, 2005

Planning Board Sends School District back to the drawing board
Attempts to placate voters backfires on school district
Read related Union Leader story | Read Meeting Minutes

GOFFSTOWN, NH - At the August 11th meeting of the Goffstown Planning Board, the school district presented its site plan for building a kindergarten on a 26-acre subdivision of Map 5, Lot 14, known as the Glen Lake property.

During the presentation, such issues as wetland impacts, drainage, sewerage, runoff, trash and snow removal were discussed. Conservation Commission member Kimberly Peace noted that nearly all of the development and the access road was to be built inside the town's voter-approved wetlands buffer.

Also brought up by numerous members of the audience was the lack of expandability of the plan to include a future elementary school, as school superintendent Darrell Lockwood and the school district have promised since late last year. Indeed, many of those in the audience reminded the board and the viewing public that prior to the March 2005 town vote authorizing transfer of the site to the school district, the original concept plan included an elementary school. They expressed their feeling that voters had been misled by the school district into believing an elementary school was part of the plan as well, only to discover after that March vote that this was not really the case, and that numerous state permits and waivers to existing regulations will be required just to build a kindergarten.

This view is further supported by the conservation commission in their report on the Glen Lake site, "Although the applicants [the school district] currently claim that they are only looking at the site for a 10 room kindergarten, previous presentations clearly indicated that the kindergarten would be expanded to an Elementary school... Expanding to a 500 student school would require 10 contiguous buildable acres to meet the state requirement."

As seen on the plan presented by the school district, the largest contiguous buildable area on the site is 2.5 acres, well below the state minimum of 7 acres required for a kindergarten alone.

Attempt to Placate

After the school district completed its presentation, Lockwood asked for, and received, permission to display a second site plan, one that this time included an elementary school. Although not the official plan, he pointed out that this second plan was simply an indication of "future possibilities", and that sometime in the next 7 to 10 years, the plan could be implemented to build the elementary school on the same site that voters were promised before March of '05.

This second plan, however, is not the plan officially submitted to the board, or to any other local or state agency.

The GRA believes this second, "future possibilities" plan was presented simply to placate voters who were misled prior to the March vote into believing the site would include a future elementary school, and was used to help dissuade objections to the fact that there is no elementary school on the official plan.

Fortunately, the planning board seemed to think so, too.

Planning Board Not Fooled

Chairman Richard Georgantus immediately asked Lockwood whether or not the real site plan, "...the one without an elementary school," took into consideration the vast increases on wetland impacts, drainage, sewerage, runoff, trash and snow removal, that would be created with the future addition of an elementary school, especially since the elementary school would include a cafeteria, which the kindergarten does not.

Lockwood's answer: "No, it does not."

Halleluiah! Finally the school district admits its official site plan has no contingency for future expansion.

Georgantus then suggested to Lockwood that he and his team of engineers needed to "go back to the drawing board" and come up with a revised plan that took future expansion - and its impacts on everything from wetlands to sewerage - into consideration. He pointed out that failure to do so would mean "tearing up" everything that would be done for the kindergarten now and having to start all over again if an elementary school was to be added later.

He then announced that the board would postpone its vote on whether or not to recommend the site to a later meeting.

Lockwood then objected to this, claiming the school district had a timeline that called for construction to begin in late September. Again, the board was not fooled, as chairman Georgantus pointed out to Lockwood that the school district had yet to receive a single permit or waiver from the state in order to even consider beginning construction.

"I think we would very much like to see a plan with the state requirements on it," he said.

Special Meeting Scheduled

Georgantus then scheduled a special, kindergarten-only meeting of the planning board for Thursday, Sept. 15, 2005, at 7:00PM, to consider the school district's revised plan.

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT MEETING FOR ALL TO ATTEND!