WOODSTOCK — A proposed new middle and high school for Woodstock and six surrounding towns would cost an estimated $73.3 million, a figure that a committee studying the project thinks will not pass muster with taxpayers without other funding sources.

At a Monday evening presentation held via Zoom, architects and builders presented designs and cost estimates for a building that would replace the aging middle and high school with a new structure built on the football field next to the current school.

Then school officials presented a range of initiatives to defray the cost in the hope of winning public support for a smaller construction bond.

“Funding the new build of the middle school/high school building with a $74 million bond is not feasible,” read one of the slides in a presentation by Ben Ford, a member of the Windsor Central Unified Union School District, which comprises the towns of Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading and Woodstock. “We need to bring it down into the realm of possibility, where people can get behind it,” said Ford, a Woodstock resident who also co-chairs a committee developing plans for the new school.

About 80 people attended the meeting, which presented the most detailed designs and cost estimates so far for the project. School officials decided in 2019 that they had to plan to replace the school, which opened in 1957.

The design presented Monday night would be built on a smaller footprint than the current school, but would be a larger, two-story structure that would maximize the site’s southern exposure, both for daylight in classrooms and, most likely, for solar energy to power the building. As currently designed, the building would house both the high school and a middle school for grades 6-8, though the Windsor Central board has not yet decided whether to bring the district’s sixth graders into the middle school.

The school and site work would cost nearly $60.5 million, and there would be another nearly $11 million in “soft costs,” which include fees and permits, furnishings, technology and a contingency account, as well as $2.2 million in “escalation” built in to account for the steady rise in construction costs.

“There’s a lot of contingencies in this estimate, to be safe,” said Leigh Sherwood, an architect with the Massachusetts-based firm Lavallee Brensinger Architects.

Tim Kostuk, a vice president with Whiting-Turner Contracting, a national firm with offices in southern New England, said the cost of lumber has risen by 38% over the past four months.

The plan also includes a list of possible upgrades, including $1.1 million to make the new football field an artificial turf field, and $700,000 to install a track around it, and a geothermal heating and cooling system, which could cost up to $2.7 million at the outset, but dramatically cut the school’s energy costs.

To pay for the project, the district will need to take out a bond, but officials also plan to solicit private donations, perhaps as much as $20 million, from individuals and foundations; to seek state construction aid, which has been on hold since 2007; and to increase district enrollment, both of in-district students and tuition students, to bring in more revenue.

In documents made public Monday, Ford outlined a range of actions district officials will need to pursue, including continuing to push for state funding, exploring a USDA loan program that would reduce the district’s borrowing costs and the possible use of some of the $4 million in pandemic relief money that the district will be required to spend by September 2023.

Fundraising could take the form of raising pledges to reduce the financial impact of the bond issue, creating an endowment for the district that would defray costs or setting up a system of annual giving similar to what private schools do. Burr and Burton Academy, an independent school in Manchester, Vt., that serves as a local public high school, has a development office with six full-time staff, Ford said.

The biggest financial benefit would come from increasing enrollment, Ford said.

In a chart showing the tax impact of a $74 million bond issue, the owner of a $350,000 home who has a household income of $200,000 would see a property tax increase of $1,454 in the first year of bond repayment.

Even if the district could raise $20 million to cut down the size of the bond, that same household would still see a $1,000 tax increase, according to another chart Ford displayed.

But if the district could raise that sum and add 100 students to the district, the tax impact on that household would fall to $364.

“No one has a crystal ball,” Ford said, but one of the trends caused by the coronavirus pandemic had brought more families to Vermont, which could increase student numbers.

And, “our district is possibly going to be the beneficiary of further consolidation” of school districts, Ford said.

The committee Ford co-chairs with Pomfret resident Bob Crean recommended making private pledges and a successful bond vote mutually contingent, and Ford called for volunteers to start work on several fundraising projects. Already, he said, a private donor has emerged who is interested in pledging $500,000 toward the project’s sustainability goals.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727 -3207.

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