Ways and Means got more useful in 16 minutes Tuesday than it did in some longer meetings, mostly because Peter Pietrantonio kept asking the question nobody in government ever seems eager to answer once the word “borrowing” shows up: what exactly are we borrowing for?
The item was a $2 million borrowing order “for the purpose of funding the MSBA high school feasibility study project.”
That sounds clean and narrow until you start pulling on it.
The administration’s explanation was that the $2 million is Everett’s local share for the Massachusetts School Building Authority feasibility phase. That phase includes hiring an OPM — owner’s project manager — and a designer, investigating sites, and developing multiple options.
So far, fair enough.
But Katy Rogers immediately got to the real issue. Does this study mean only a new high school, or does it also include Pope John, the old Everett High School, and other sites across the city?
Answer: yes, broadly speaking, all of it.
The administration said the MSBA process requires looking at the current high school site, addition-renovation options, and possible new sites. Later, they were even clearer: “Citywide.”
That matters because this is not just a tidy little study about one building. This is a citywide facilities puzzle wrapped inside a “high school feasibility” label.
Pietrantonio saw the same problem and asked the obvious follow-up: “Why does it say high school?”
Good question.
The answer, more or less, was that the MSBA project is formally a high school project, but to solve the overcrowding problem you may need to look across the whole school system. That included discussion of the old high school being studied for middle school conversion and other buildings being evaluated to “support different scenarios.”
In plain English: they are studying a high school problem that may rearrange a lot more than the high school.
That does not mean anything improper is happening. It does mean the title of the borrowing order gives a cleaner impression than the discussion did.
Pietrantonio kept digging. Hadn’t Everett already done a feasibility study? The administration’s answer was that even if a prior study exists, MSBA makes you start over in its own prescribed process. Old work can support the new process, but it does not replace it.
Again, fair enough. State money comes with state rules.
Then came the part people at home actually care about: debt.
Pietrantonio said it straight: “What scares me, borrowing. That word borrowing.” He noted the city already borrowed $44 million for the school and asked, “can the city handle the borrowing?”
That is the right question, and not just because rates, taxes, and basic math still exist no matter how many consultants are in the room.
The administration’s answer was that this $2 million would ultimately roll into whatever final project is selected. In other words, if Everett moves forward, this feasibility money becomes part of the larger project cost rather than money tossed into a fire pit for paperwork. They also said a reimbursable portion should come back through MSBA as part of the full bond package, assuming the city proceeds.
Chair Stephanie Smith pushed on another weak spot: what if the city does not go forward? “Do we lose the 2,000,000?” she asked. She also pointed out Everett has done feasibility studies before “and nothing happened of it.”
That is not cynicism. That is memory.
The administration did not say the money magically comes back if nothing happens. They said, “we wouldn’t be spending $2,000,000 to not move forward,” and insisted nobody has discussed not moving forward because the overcrowding problem “needs to be resolved.”
Maybe so. But that is not quite the same as answering the underlying concern. A feasibility study is still a risk until an actual project gets approved, funded, and built. Everybody knows that. Pretending otherwise is just municipal stagecraft.
Smith also surfaced the oddest process problem of the night.
She asked how the city is paying the OPM now, since the city already hired the OPM and now has a designer on board. The answer: “yes and no.” Then came the real point. “There should have been a vote, in the last few months before the new administration came in. And so that’s the rectification that we’re trying to make today.”
That line deserved more attention than it got.
Because what that means, in plain English, is the city already moved ahead in this process and is now coming back to clean up the authorization.
That may be fixable. It may even be routine in the sloppy way local government sometimes treats sequencing. But it is still backwards. First vote, then commitment. Not the other way around.
To the committee’s credit, they did not just wave the thing through in 45 seconds. Smith asked whether the feasibility work includes traffic, infrastructure, test fits, schematic options, and public meetings. The answer was yes. The administration said the process requires engagement and that they would come back and provide updates if the council wants them.
Pietrantonio asked for exactly that. He said he did not want the city to land on “three locations” and have neighborhoods blindsided. Again, basic governance, not radical theory.
In the end, the committee voted favorable action unanimously.
That was probably the expected outcome. Everett plainly has a school overcrowding problem, and nobody on the committee argued otherwise.
But the meeting still exposed a few things worth remembering.
First, this is not a narrow one-building study no matter how the order is labeled.
Second, some of the process appears to have started before the borrowing vote caught up.
Third, $2 million for a feasibility phase is real money, and councilors were right to treat “borrowing” like an actual word with consequences.
That should be standard behavior in Ways and Means. In Everett, it still counts as a pleasant surprise.