HomeWorld NewsStamford has a plan to fix its schools. Now, a worried finance board is asking how to pay for it.

Stamford has a plan to fix its schools. Now, a worried finance board is asking how to pay for it.

  • March 3, 2022
  • Posted by: Bastion team
  • Category: World News
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STAMFORD — Members of the Board of Finance are puzzling over how the city will pay for revamping its school buildings without breaking the bank.

Tuesday evening, architecture and design firm SLAM Collaborative gave the finance board the same presentation the Board of Education and other officials received last month on its draft master plan for Stamford schools. The plan includes building a new K-8 school in the southern part of the city, shuttering four schools, turning three elementary schools into K-8 institutions and making improvements at other schools.

The plan “is dependent upon a significant amount of state contribution funding,” Kemp Morhardt, a principal at SLAM, told the Board of Finance, and it “is still being determined exactly what those percentages will be.”

If the plan was implemented in full and its funding assumptions were met, the city would be on the hook for more than $500 million over 12 years.

“I’ve listened quietly through this whole presentation, and I think our job is going to be: How the hell are we going to pay for this without blowing up the city finances, jeopardizing our triple-A credit rating and overtaxing the people who live in the city,” said Democrat Mary Lou Rinaldi, the board’s vice chair.

“I’m not saying this work doesn’t have to be done. It certainly does,” Rinaldi added. But she is concerned, for one, that the estimates…

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