Meeting on East Hampton High School Set For Next Week

The boards of finance and education, along with the Town Council, will hold a “tri-board” meeting next week to discuss the proposed $52 million renovation of East Hampton High School.

The three boards will meet Tuesday, April 9, at 7:30 p.m., in the Media Center at the high school.

The gathering was called after the Board of Finance last week rejected the school renovation project on a vote of 5-2, amid complaints the project is too expensive and includes some spending proposals some board members don’t like.

The school building committee is racing against a June 30 deadline to get the project through the necessary local approvals and submitted to the state. June 30 is the last day of the current fiscal year and the state’s has promised a reimbursement rate of 52 percent for the current fiscal year.

The council and the school board have already approved the project and the finance board was the last key vote the building committee needed to bring the project to a town wide referendum vote.

The board was hoping to hold the referendum by the end of this month to avoid having two large funding questions put to voters at the same time: The school project and the annual budget vote.

The finance board’s decision not back the project angered some local supporters of the plan, particularly the reasons some board members gave for not wanting to approve it: A proposal to install lights at the school’s athletic fields and a plan to move the school district’s central offices from an old building in the downtown to the newly renovated school.

After the vote on March 27, however, some finance board members said they might reconsider their opposition of the project if those two proposals were removed.