Southampton School Administration Building Proposition Gets Voted Down

Southampton School District voters on Tuesday night soundly rejected a proposal to purchase a home in Southampton Village and convert it into administrative offices at a cost of $5.2 million, with a vote of 894-397.The district was in contract to purchase the property at 50 Narrow Lane, near the high school, for nearly $2.3 million from John Pace Jr. and Donna Marie Pace. School Board members approved the agreement in February and put down a $115,000 deposit, which is refundable now that voters have rejected the purchase.Along with the $2.3 million purchase price, district officials proposed spending an additional $2.9 million to renovate the house into an office building, making the total cost $5.2 million. The renovations would have included filling in a backyard pool and creating an addition—which in some areas was expected to be two stories—between the home and the garage. It also would have included office space and an elevator to ensure the office was compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.“It got rejected resoundingly there, by 500 votes,” said Michael Medio, who was elected to his first term as a School Board member on Tuesday night. “It’s time to hit the drawing board again and try to come up with a solution that’s going to appease the taxpayers, because, clearly, they aren’t happy with that or any other solutions that have been put forward thus far.”With two rejections in a row, board members are back to square one in their efforts to come up with a solution for a new administration office.Immediately following the election results, Superintendent Dr. Nicholas Dyno said he would go back to work to strategize the next steps: “We still need a new district office, so we’re going to re-evaluate.”“I’m disappointed that a plan, again, has been rejected by the voters,” Board President Roberta Hunter said. “But we’ll be back. We’ll be back with another plan, and that’s all we can do.”Julia McCormack, who lives near the Narrow Lane property and who expressed concerns about the project at board meetings and through letters to the editor of The Press, said on Wednesday that she believes the district needs a new office because the space has been “out-used for its useful life.” But she criticized the way the district approached the project, which she said was in an almost backward fashion.Ms. McCormack explained that she has no children in the district, and the first time she heard about the project was in an article in The Press in February. Instead of reading about what was going on in her neighborhood through the paper, she said, she would have preferred it if district officials had reached out directly to those affected.“The School Board communicated their decision after the decision was made,” she said. “To be successful, that conversation has to be held with the community before the decision is made.”On Tuesday night, Ms. McCormack said she was not living in the district in 2015 when the officials eyed purchasing the properties at 300 and 310 Hampton Road for new district offices, but said that would have been a better solution. A proposition to purchase the property for $7.75 million was presented to the voters for a vote that year, and it also was rejected.