While passing its budget Thursday night, Brick school officials said the spending plan contained a $25,000 line item which would fund the management of a referendum that will be presented to taxpayers in the next year.
Officials did not elaborate on what projects, specifically, the money would fund, however they indicated a vote on the plan would be put to taxpayers this year.
One of the reasons Brick is looking to ask taxpayers to vote on a referendum now is because a bond from 1996 is expiring. That will eliminate annual payments of about $500,000 to pay off the former borrowing. The idea is to keep the $500,000 debt service payments in the budget, but borrow $12 million to fund immediate projects without adding new annual debt service payments to the budget.
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Earlier this spring, Brick officials laid out more than $12.5 million in repairs that are needed district-wide. In a previous report from Shorebear, the $12.5 million in repairs would range from a $1,496,000 roof replacement for the Warren H. Wolf Elementary School (formerly the Primary Learning Center), to $1,297,637 for new baseball and softball fields at Brick Memorial High School, to $1,558,000 to replace a track at Brick Township High School.
Some of the biggest ticket items the district believes it must purchase come in the form of larger, capital projects, such as $1,500,000 for new security vestibules district-wide, another $1,500,000 for a second floor air conditioning system at Lake Riviera Middle School, and $750,000 for a central heating boiler covering multiple buildings. In all, the list of proposed projects adds up to $12,566,946.