Trustees of the New Paltz Central School District’s Board of Education were unable to agree on whether to make the third of three propositions in their possible $48 million capital improvement plan dependent upon the second proposition passing.
Proposition #1 could include LED lighting upgrades, home bleacher and press box improvements, locker room renovations, window and door upgrades, roof replacements, boiler room upgrades in the high school, water storage tank replacements, and many others. An August 9 update puts the estimated cost of Proposition #1 at $17,878,249.
Proposition #2 is primarily centered on athletics, with the estimated $10,577,424 covering items like a new turf and scoreboard for Floyd Patterson field, new tennis courts, a new eight-lane track and various other upgrades.
Proposition #3 is focused on a new 15,000-square-foot aquatics center, with either six or eight 25-yard swimming lanes and a depth between 5-and-13-feet. Costs to build the center would also include locker rooms, bathrooms and showers, with the latter required by the state Department of Health. The estimated cost of Proposition #3 is $19,219,200.
During a school board meeting held on Wednesday, October 16, Superintendent Stephen Gratto suggested that finalizing the structure of the facilities proposal by the next scheduled meeting on November 6 would be ideal to allow for the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) process to get underway. After a public information period involving mailings and meetings, the public could have their say at the polls on Thursday, January 16, 2025.
“This is the plan, but it starts with you finalizing the propositions,” said Gratto.
The school board had a quorum at the October 16 meeting, but it did not have a consensus. With board president Matt Williams absent, trustees were evenly split on whether to allow for each proposition to pass by majority vote, or whether to make Proposition #3’s success dependent upon Proposition #2 passing, even if the former had enough votes and the latter didn’t. Heather Kort was in the latter camp.
“I think I’d like to do that,” said Kort. “I think it mainly stems from maintaining current infrastructure before building out new. I think there would be a lot of people that are disappointed if (Proposition #) 3 passed and (Proposition #) 2 didn’t. I don’t know if I would feel comfortable with a brand new pool, but no brand new sports facilities for other sports.”
Fellow trustee Glenn LaPolt supported keeping the propositions separate, and giving each a chance of succeeding or failing on their own.
The community spoke, they wrote hundreds of letters, they spoke here about all kinds of issues,” he said. “It would be a travesty on the one hand if the pool was to pass and the other stuff was to fail, but on the other hand that’s what the community wants, then they’re speaking.”
LaPolt recalled numerous impassioned pleas from parents and students alike in support of the elements of Proposition #3 not just in the last year, but the past several years.
“They spoke about super compelling issues and sometimes people took up the entire 30 minutes of public comment and then wrote letters,” he said. “And you know, the pool is not just for the kids. It could be a community thing.”
Trustee Jason Clark would also rather the propositions were not connected on the ballot.
“Both (Proposition #) 2 and (Proposition #) 3 are fairly big projects, but I don’t think that requiring the passage of 2 to allow the passage of 3 would let the people of the community voice what they’ve been telling us. I think a lot of the students who do swim probably do other sports too. And so it’s probably going to have to be a personal decision of what the community feels like they can fiscally and responsibly support and let them vote on it.”
LaPolt added that the synthetic turf in Proposition #2 yielded strong opinions on both sides of the argument, and didn’t feel it made sense for the proposed aquatic center to hinge on a separate potentially hotly contested issue.
“The anti-turfers show up and tank (Proposition #)2, by default, the pool is going to get tanked because they can’t vote for that,” he said. “Sometimes you’ve just got to cut bait and let the voters vote on it. They vote it down, they vote it down. They vote it in, they vote it in.”
Trustees are also unsure of which type of turf they’d like to support in Proposition #2. An organic, corn husk-based turf is under consideration, though it was deemed expensive to install, expensive to maintain, and because it’s packed tightly, can lead to injuries. Virgin rubber material was considered a better fit than recycled rubber, LaPolt said, “because it doesn’t have the highway miles on it.”
Justin Seweryn said he didn’t think the proposition would live or die based on the virgin vs. recycled rubber discussion, and board vice-president Liz Bonhag agreed.
“I think it’s the turf itself that’s the problem, not the fill,” she said. “You’re still going to have an enormous plastic carpet out there. So I think anybody who’s against that, you know, I don’t know how much we’re going to sway people with the makeup of the fill.”
Keeping the field surface natural grass was deemed impractical and expensive, particularly as the field currently becomes unusable when waterlogged.
“The fact is that any other school, they have all their kids on the turf when it’s raining or after rain,” LaPolt said. “Our biggest field out here is only used five times a year.”
Join the family! 
