Gorham voters will be asked in November to approve borrowing more than $12 million for facilities improvements the school department is seeking. The Town Council Tuesday sent the matter to referendum after chopping $4 million from a $16.7 million school request.

The schools’ call for additional funds follows on the heels of a $53.4 million school budget that survived a recount in June by two votes.

The council this week voted 6-1 in favor of a referendum with Chair Suzanne Phillips opposed.

“After the results of the school budget vote, I couldn’t risk putting another tax increase on residents, that’s why I voted ‘no,'” Phillips told the American Journal after the vote. “I did not agree on the amount.”

The $12 million would include $9 million in improvements at the high school on Morrill Avenue, including a cafeteria expansion, plus adding six classrooms and bathrooms in a modular phase. The aging high school opened in 1959 and was last expanded in the mid-1990s to house 750 students; enrollment was 810 as of last October.

Gorham Superintendent Heather Perry addresses the Gorham Town Council Tuesday. Robert Lowell / American Journal

Superintendent Heather Perry said Tuesday the high school enrollment would grow to 900 within the next three years.

Tennis courts at the high school are deteriorating and $2.5 million is earmarked for rebuilding them off the site. The school department proposed relocating the tennis courts to the middle school on Weeks Road in a move that would free up space at the cramped high school campus.

But Councilor Phil Gagnon successfully convinced the council to relocate the courts, which are available for public use, to Robie Park adjacent to the high school. The money would increase the number of tennis courts from four to five, and add lighting.

The referendum would also include $460,575 to cover heating, ventilation and air conditioning repairs at Narragansett Elementary School, built in 1980.

Projects that were chopped from the school department’s $16.7 million request by councilors included $3.4 million for parking lot repaving and parking expansion in addition to an access drive to White Birch Lane from Village Elementary School on Robie Street; $240,381 for sidewalk replacement at Great Falls Elementary School on Justice Way; and $699,000 for increased parking and repaving at the high school.

If projects are not done now they will “snowball,” Perry said. “The needs are growing and the price tags are growing.”

Phillips, a former School Committee member, told the American Journal she’s willing to help. “I will work with the council on funding some (school) projects in the future as I have suggested in the past,” Phillips said.

A resident on South Street for 53 years, Ken Curtis, spoke about concerns for the impact on taxes while Janet Kuech of Narragansett Street, a former town councilor, urged the council to fund projects. “We’ve been kicking the can down the road,” Kuech said.

Councilors will conduct a public hearing on the referendum before the election, but a date was not set this week.