Clarksburg Approves Debt Exclusion for School Roof

Staff Reports02:34PM / Thursday, June 26, 2025Print Story | Email Story

Update: The debt exclusion vote passed 200-50 on Wednesday. Turnout was about 20 percent and Town Clerk Marilyn Gomeau described the balloting as going smoothly with "a steady flow" of voters through the afternoon and evening.

The vote means that the $500,000 borrowing to fix the elementary school roof passed at town meeting last month will not be calculated as part of the town's Proposition 2 1/2 levy capacity, but as a separate charge.

Originally posted June 24, 2025, at 12:57 p.m.: CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Voters will decide whether to exclude a half-million dollar borrowing for the school roof from Proposition 2 1/2.

The vote on Wednesday, from noon to 7 at the Community Center, follows the approval of the borrowing at town meeting on May 29.

Town meeting authorized the borrowing of $500,000 and also approved the use $113,371 from the school roof stabilization fund. The bid from D.J. Wooliver & Sons was $399,000, but town officials secured up to $613,000 to cover any unexpected expenses.

The school roof has been a concern for years, ever since a new school project was defeated in 2017. A $500,000 earmark for the roof by former state Sen. Adam Hinds was nixed by the Massachusetts School Building Authority because the school is not up to educational building standards.

The issue became more critical earlier this year when the roof began leaking and buckets appeared in the classrooms. Town and school officials had broached the possibility of another school project, but the urgency of the roof's condition prompted the decision to borrow.

A yes vote on Wednesday means repayment of the borrowing will not be calculated as part of the Prop 2 1/2 levy limit. The five-year borrowing is expected to add $200 to the average property bill, declining each year starting in fiscal 2027.

This vote is similar to the debt exclusion vote held in 2019 for a five-year borrowing of $1 million for road and school repairs.

The roof will be replaced this summer while school is out. It's expected to take about two weeks.

Tags: Clarksburg School, debt exclusion, roof,

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North Adams School Project Awards $51M Bid

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
05:10AM / Friday, February 13, 2026

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee has awarded the Greylock School project to Fontaine Bros. Inc. of Springfield.

Mayor Jennifer Macksey said she could "breathe a little better" with a bid contract that comes in nearly $2 million under budget.

The committee approved a bid of $50,498,544 on Thursday night that includes two alternates — the rebuild of the Appalachian Trail kiosk and the relocation and reconstruction of the baseball field.

"I will say, all in all, for us to have overall the number of bidders that we had interested in our project, and especially to receive the GC bids that we did, the team Colliers and TSKP certainly did a good job attracting people to us," she said. "But this project ... really shows the testament of the good work that Colliers and TSKP and all of you have been doing throughout this process."

Fontaine had the low bid between Brait Builders of Marshfield and J&J Contractors Inc. of North Billerica.

The project had been bid out at $52,250,000 with three alternates: moving the ballfield, the kiosk and vertical geothermal wells.

Committee members asked Timothy Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, about his impressions of the bidders. He was most familiar with Fontaine, having worked with the company on a half-dozen school projects and noted it was the contractor on the Mountain View Elementary School in Easthampton that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has held up as an example school. He also had some of his colleagues call on projects that he had not personally worked on.

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