Letter: WMS Scrutiny Needed

To the Editor:

As a Weston resident and taxpayer for more than 30 years, and as a real estate and tax attorney with more than 35 years of experience, I appreciate Weston Today’s efforts to keep residents informed about the proposed middle school project. Your reporting has done an excellent job summarizing Board of Education presentations and keeping the public updated.

Given the magnitude of this proposal, however, I respectfully submit that now is the time for more investigative journalism and more probing questions.

This project is likely to be one of the most significant financial decisions in Weston’s history and could affect taxpayers for decades. Before residents are asked to support a project expected to cost well over $100 million, they deserve an independent examination of the assumptions upon which it is based.

Many longtime residents remember the last major school project approved by referendum in November 2001, which ultimately resulted in the Intermediate School and major additions to Weston High School. At that time, Weston’s mill rate was 22.42, compared with Westport’s 17.20 — a difference of approximately 30 percent.

Today, Weston’s mill rate is 24.57, while Westport’s is 13.20. In other words, Weston’s mill rate is now approximately 86 percent higher than Westport’s — nearly three times the disparity that existed when the last major school project was approved.

Certainly, many factors have influenced property taxes over the past twenty-five years, and I do not suggest that the earlier school project alone explains today’s difference. However, Westport has also invested substantially in its schools and other capital improvements during that same period while maintaining a dramatically lower mill rate. That reality should encourage careful examination before Weston undertakes another project of this magnitude.

Among the questions deserving independent scrutiny are:

• Has the approximately 20 percent decline in student enrollment materially changed the need to maintain four separate school buildings?
• Has the Board prepared a current analysis comparing the long-term costs of maintaining four schools versus consolidating into three using today’s enrollment, construction costs, and operating expenses?
• What would the long-term operating savings be if one school building were eliminated?

These are not arguments against a new middle school. They are simply questions taxpayers deserve to have answered before making one of the largest financial commitments in the Town’s history.

A local newspaper serves its readers best not only by reporting what public officials say, but also by independently examining the facts, testing assumptions, and asking the difficult questions that many taxpayers are asking. I hope Weston Today will do so before this important decision is placed before the voters.

—  Brad M. Aron

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