Monitoring School Facilities Spend: January 2025 edition
- Feb 14, 2025
- 2 min read
As promised, we are carefully tracking the spending situation at the South Hunterdon School District on a month by month basis. This is our January, 2025 edition based on the January 27, 2025 Board of Education Meeting agenda materials.
To date, the District has spent or contracted for a total of $31,947,449 on the Lambertville Public School and new Middle School.
As a reminder, the entire 2021 referendum for renovating LPS and constructing the middle school was $33.4 million. Which would imply only about $1.4 million of expenditures is left from the budget.
Except this isn't the case.
LPS construction has gone far above what tax payers were told it would cost. We were told the budget for LPS would be approximately $12.7 million. In reality, we have paid $14,321,009 so far for the LPS renovation, including the new roof we were told we would not need, "emergency" HVAC replacement in the gym section we were never warned about, wall-sized video games costing over $20,000, and literal millions in furniture, flooring and kitchen work.
The Middle School construction has cost $16,828,088 to date. The original budget was approximately $20.7 million. We know this will go over budget by at least $2 million, if not more.
By Februrary or March of 2025, we should have a clearer picture of how far over budget the Middle School project will be. A number of change orders have already come in for hundreds of thousands of dollars, more are expected as the interior finishing work progresses.
The question that tax payers have is: where is the district getting the money to fund all of this? We have not even explored the PreK options, turf field upgrades, or other multi-million dollar projects the district is contemplating above and beyond the referendum work. Other nearby districts are struggling with massive budget deficits and are voting on potential 6% budget increases. How can South Hunterdon manufacture these capital budgets for years on end without end?
The full details on the facilities spend can be found in our tracking spreadsheet available here. The sheet is updated every month.
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