The Gorham School Committee seeks $300,000 from the town to plan for an expansion of the high school.

The Gorham School Committee voted 4-0 in a special meeting Monday to ask the Town Council for $300,000 in a cash advance to plan a high school expansion. Pictured are School Committee Vice Chairman Dennis Libby, with back to camera, and, from left, Superintendent Heather Perry and School Committee members Stewart McCallister, Kyle Currier, and Sara Nelson.

GORHAM — The  School Committee is asking town councilors for a $300,000 cash advance to start planning for a renovation of the town’s aging high school.

“We’re looking at a renovation on site,” Superintendent Heather Perry said at a School Committee meeting this week.

School leaders apparently came away from a joint workshop in June believing the Town Council would support a high school renovation/addition plan, one of three multimillion dollar options outlined in a feasibility study. The Town Council, however, hasn’t formally endorsed a project and at last month’s meeting cautioned school officials about spending big money yet on plans.

At a special meeting at 8:30 p.m. Monday, the School Committee on the motion of member Kyle Currier voted 4-0 (Chairman Darryl Wright and School Committee member Suzanne Phillips absent) to request borrowing $300,000 in seed money from the town.

The money would be used to hire architectural and engineering assistance as well as other professional services to develop a plan to move forward. The borrowed seed money would be wrapped into the total cost of a successful referendum authorizing a bond for construction of a project.

“Seed money is reimbursed back to the town when a bond goes through,” said School Committee Vice Chairman Dennis Libby, who ran Monday’s meeting in the absence of Wright.

A renovation project, estimated now to cost up to $50 million, would require approval by town councilors and town voters. Town taxpayers would shoulder the cost of borrowing that money for construction, likely without state financial assistance.

School officials say the high school is outdated and overcrowded. The school opened in the fall of 1959 and was renovated in 1994 to accommodate 750 students.

Enrollment was 835 in 2016 but had once swelled to 900 students and 955 students are projected within a decade. A renovation project could be aimed at handling up to 1,100 students.

The seed money request could be on the Town Council’s agenda for Tuesday, Aug. 8.

The action has precedence as the Town Council loaned the School Department $235,000 a decade ago to plan for the Great Falls Elementary School and several years prior to that $200,000 to jump-start the middle school project.

Perry will meet Friday, July 28, with Town Manager David Cole to discuss the process and whether it’s even possible for town councilors to grant the School Department’s latest seed money request.

According to the town charter, capital expenditures over $250,000 require a referendum approved by voters. At issue apparently is whether or not the seed money would be defined as a capital expenditure, and Perry asked Cole in a letter Monday to solicit a legal opinion from the town’s lawyer.

If a finding determines the seed money request constitutes a capital expenditure, then the School Committee could ask for seed money in two phases. But Perry said in the letter to Cole that she doesn’t believe that it represents a capital expenditure.

“The funds we are requesting will be used for planning and engineering for a potential concept or a proposed capital project,” Perry wrote. “Until voters approve it, I would interpret the work to be nothing more than a lot of studies and drawings.”

The Town Council in June heard results of an independent feasibility study with options that included a renovation/addition, new high school at another site, and switching the high and middle schools.

Some town councilors voiced leaning towards the renovation/addition option. Under that scenario, some athletic fields could be relocated but the high school would remain in its present location in the village on the same campus as the municipal center and Baxter Memorial Library.

Perry said in a letter to town councilors on July 10 that the “least expensive option” would be to add on to the high school.

But, town councilors, as Currier noted this week, have not taken any formal vote on a high school project.

Robert Lowell can be reached at 854-2577 or [email protected]