East Hampton High School Building Committee Will Have Revised Proposal Monday

The East Hampton High School Building Committee is reviewing changes to the proposed $52 million renovation of the school and hopes to have a revised proposal by Monday.

In a Facebook posting today on the EHHS Renovate to Educate page, committee member Cynthia Abraham said the panel reviewed the proposal Thursday night at its meeting and plan to have a revised proposal by Monday.

She also said the committee hopes to meet with the boards of finance and education, as well as the Town Council, to review the revised proposal. Abraham said the meeting is needed because the Board of Finance has requested a scope of change in the plan and it is “really not their purview to do so.”

The building committee is hoping to get the proposal approved soon so it can go to referendum late next month.

The changes come after which the state would reimburse at a rate of 52.5 percent. The finance board voted 5-2 against it, with several members complaining about the cost, about proposals to install lights at the school’s athletic fields and a plan to move the school district’s central offices from an older building in the village to the renovated high school.

While some on the board questioned whether some residents in East Hampton would be able to afford the average $315 per year average tax increase under the financing plan, others said they don’t want the central offices moving into the high school and want the approximately $325,000 cost of the field lights funded separately.

After rejecting the plan some of the finance board’s members said they would reconsider the proposal if the building committee changed the scope of the project to address their concerns.