
| Joanne Cole |
About two dozen residents turned out Tuesday night at GNG High School for an informative and at times spirited public hearing on the MSAD 15 air quality and school improvement bond projects. Attendees barely outnumbered school board members, school administrators and staff, and project architects, engineers and legal counsel on hand to respond to questions and comments.
In Q & A lasting 90 minutes, eight different audience members stepped to the mic, some repeatedly, as each of the three bond project ballot questions was taken up in turn.
Questions ranged from the highly specific (What would the bid period be for contractors interested in the High School renovation work?) to the broad (What happens if voters don’t pass Question 1 for the HVAC upgrades?)
But a few themes emerged. They centered on the need for the projects, whether there might be unhappy cost surprises ahead, and the process.
The evening also saw residents thank the board for their work and for providing another opportunity to be informed, and board chair Penny Collins expressing appreciation to first-time attendees and familiar faces alike for “investing the time and energy to be here and engage with us on this.” This was the board’s third public session on the bond; two were held in July.
The session opened with Director of Finance and Operations David Pascale walking through estimated tax impacts if it turns out that the full amount of authorized money needs to be borrowed. (Residents are voting to authorize the District to borrow up to specific amounts, but the District hopes to need less than those maximums.)
Listeners could be excused if they lost the thread after hearing Pascale mention Gray’s current total taxable property valuation: $2,190,643,374. That’s over $2.1 billion with a “B”–the result of Gray’s very recent town-wide revaluation. The equivalent figure for New Gloucester is a comparatively paltry $643 million. Both values were provided by the Towns, Pascale said.
Those valuation figures led later to one of the evening’s more unusual big-picture questions: Why are project costs split with 66 percent falling to Gray and 34 percent to New Gloucester? Why isn’t it an even share? The unspoken implication seemed to be that New Gloucester is coasting on Gray’s nickel.
Long-serving board member Sam Pfeifle explained that the split is based on a formula that dates back to the agreement that created the District, in the early ‘60s. It uses the state’s property valuations (not the Towns’ own numbers) to determine how much each community will carry.
When the speaker suggested it might be past time to revisit the breakdown, Pfeifle said that’s up to the towns, not the school board, which is an independent entity with its own charter. “If either town is dissatisfied, that town has to start the process,” he said.
But most audience questions and comments focused directly on project-specific topics.

Are the projects needed? One questioner asked what the risks would be if the District doesn’t take action now on the HVAC systems. Alluding to MSAD 15’s aged systems, Don Bresnahan of Building Infrastructure Management Solutions replied that what you don’t want is to wait and have something “fail catastrophically because it’s 35 to 50 years old and you’ve duct-taped and you’ve baling-wired it to death.”
When that happens, difficult and expensive decisions result, like those in RSU 10 and SAD 17 to close school buildings and have to find emergency funds and alternative locations, Bresnahan said.
Board member Sam Pfeifle pointed to the cost impacts if voters don’t approve the Question 1 HVAC measure now: the District “will lose the $3 million that we don’t have to give back.” The State awarded MSAD 15 nearly $3.1 million in outright grant and a $3.4 million zero-interest loan to fund air quality improvements. It’s federal Covid money that Maine made available to schools—a pot of money that will be gone, Pfeifle said.
“If we don’t do this project now, the HVAC problems are still going to be problems,” Pfeifle said. “They’re going to be 51 years old instead of 50 years old, but we won’t be able to get any state help.”
Another speaker appeared to question the need for the HVAC work if it’s based on the schools’ CO2 test readings. She read aloud from a professional association publication to the effect that there’s no agreed standard regarding what levels of CO2 are unacceptable or affect health. The implication seemed to be that the HVAC project isn’t warranted.
Steve Furgeson of Aeras Engineering and Don Bresnahan of BiMS offered to provide the questioner research on CO2, with Bresnahan saying it would show “exactly the opposite.” He noted that the District’s air handling systems are 35 to 50 years old and said CO2 levels are one measure but not the sole indicator of why ‘antiquated’ systems should be replaced.
The Maine Department of Education evidently agreed on the need, Bresnahan suggested. MSAD 15 “finished first” out of 109 applications for 2023-24 Maine DOE air quality grants, receiving the “substantial” award of $6.5 million in funding.
As for whether a regulation-sized gym is needed, a resident said he has coached basketball in a nearby district, been in countless gyms over the years, and GNG’s “is the worst high school basketball gym I have ever set foot in.” The tight sidelines mean people walk on the court, tracking in dirt and salt in winter. “The Athletic Director is sweeping every timeout and dead ball, doing the best they can,” but the risk of slipping and injuries remains.
The cafeteria-kitchen renovations prompted questions about lunch periods, long lines, students’ time to eat and food choices. The length of lunch periods is driven by the academic schedule, chair Penny Collins said, but the larger serving area will be more efficient than the current one-at-a-time arrangement. It will be like a food court at the mall, with space for more stations and food choices, and allow kids to “spill in,” get what they want and go sit down. Kids would be able to see more choices instead of just taking the first thing they encounter and running that offering out, Mike Johanning of WBRC said.

Question 3, the option for synthetic turf for the main field prompted a succinct, “Why turf?” from an audience member. Turf was what the District’s needs assessment determined was appropriate after talking with students, coaches, professionals, and others, Collins said. It gets students outside as early as March and can handle more use. In addition, turf is the standard for performance fields and is required for neutral site games, like playoffs, she said.
Asked about maintenance and how long synthetic turf lasts, Benjamin Gleason of specialty design firm Activitas said turf now typically lasts 12 to 15 years, but the firm used 10 years in its side-by-side turf vs. grass cost and usage analysis, which he called “a robust study.”
Asked whether Maine law is outlawing PFAS in turf as of 2029, Gleason said, “That’s some misinformation out there.” The law restricts only turf products that have PFAS “intentionally added,” he said, “What I can definitively tell you is that no fields that we’ve put in and seen put in in the last three years from synthetic turf manufacturers have any PFAS intentionally added to the system.”
Gleason’s firm requires that samples of all the turf components–carpet, backing, infill—be tested by independent labs before it gets to the field. “If there’s any PFAS, we don’t want them,” he said. Test results can be shared publicly, as his firm is doing in Lexington, Mass. and as Kennebunk may have done, so the community “knows what’s going in.”

Cost surprises? A cluster of questions involved whether surprise costs might affect the HVAC project or the upgrades at the High School.
Can the State renege on or retract the $6.5 million grant and no-interest loan that funds the lion’s share of costs to replace and upgrade HVAC systems in four schools, a resident asked. No, said Sam Pfeifle. “It’s been awarded to us. It’s sitting there waiting for us. If we pass and authorize to accept it, we get it for sure.”
Are there contingencies built into the HVAC project pricing? If not, could there be extra unbudgeted costs if the HVAC contractor discovers something unexpected? No, the HVAC contract is “a firm, fixed price,” said Don Bresnahan, no change orders allowed. Those were the terms bidders were required to sign on to, he said.
For Question 2, the High School improvements package, more than $6 million in contingencies is included in the up to $57 million figure, WBRC’s Mike Johanning said. That’s in accordance with state recommendations, he said. “Figuring out the exact cost costs money,” Pfeifle said.
WBRC’s Johanning also said that there won’t be extra costs if only Question 1 is done and not Question 2, or vice versa. Each is planned as an independent, standalone project, not interdependent. As a result, costs for Question 1 won’t go up if Question 2 isn’t also done. If both measures do pass, the hope is for synergies and efficiencies that might produce savings, such as installing sprinklers while ceilings are open for ventilation work.
Process questions. Competitive bidding was the subject of a few questions, including whether the District might require at least three bids for the High School improvements work and why the District went forward with the HVAC contract after receiving only one final bid. The answers turned out to be practical ones.
In Maine, “only so many companies are bonded with the scale to do this work,” Sam Pfeifle said regarding whether the District would require three bids for the High School improvements project. (A bond guarantees the contractor will meet its obligations and is an expense and potential hurdle for a contractor to secure.) “We’re not swimming in large construction companies here,” Pfeifle said.
Other board members agreed they’d prefer multiple bids but that’s not a given in the current climate. Long-serving board member Gary Harriman said the District “used to get 15 bids” for a bus, a van, a construction project. Now, he said, “You’re lucky if you get two or three.”
As for whether the HVAC work went out for public competitive bid, engineer Steve Furgeson confirmed that it did. Six firms requested the full package of materials, but only one of the interested firms ultimately submitted a final bid, he said. Mechanical Services, which brought the State air quality grant possibility to the District’s attention while doing other HVAC work in 2022, was the bidder and got the contract. Other companies were aware but chose not to complete the process.
With only one final bid received, why didn’t the District go back out to bid and try again, a resident asked. Sam Pfeifle, who was board chair at the time, explained that the lone bid price came in under the District’s estimate and the State $6.5 million grant/loan award would help alleviate the impact on local taxpayers, so the board went forward with the bid.
Gary Harriman added context. “We look very hard at those bids and look carefully at who submits them,” he said. “I would never advocate to accept a bid only because it’s the only bid we have.” But a bid from a quality company that comes in “anywhere near” the estimate, “I would advocate that we do it. I’m interested in moving the District forward,” Harriman said. “Every year we delay is more expensive.” The questions and answers continued.
Before the public hearing began, students took residents around the areas of the High School that are slated for improvement: the cafetorium, the stage, the band and chorus rooms, the gym and a locker room.
The young hosts answered questions about their lived experiences in those spaces as singers, actors, musicians, athletes. It was a reminder, before the focus of the evening shifted to costs, contracts and contingencies, that taxpayers aren’t the only ones who will be watching the November 5 bond referendum results.
