by Brian Keaney

Payments on the Town’s level of exempt debt won’t change much in the next few years if a new Avery School is built.  If taxpayers approve the debt exclusion to pay for the school it will come at a time when older debt is being paid off, resulting in a leveling off until 2015. 

“One of the advantageous circumstances is that much of the debt we voted on approximately ten years ago,” School Building/ Rehabilitation Committee Chairman Andy Lawlor said, “rolled off last year or is slated to roll off over the next four or five years.”

Lawlor told both the Finance Committee and the School Committee in separate presentations this week that items such as sewer work, the science labs at the High School, and the East Street construction is or shortly will be coming off the books. 

The Town’s share of the project is currently $12.26 million, and the state will pay for at least $11.09 million.  The Town will not borrow the full $12 million at once, however, and will instead borrow money as needed while construction is ongoing.

Combined with the older debt being retired, the borrowing of smaller sums on an ongoing basis will result in a near constant level of debt service payments for the Town until fiscal year 2014.  After that debt service payments will begin to drop.

Exempt Debt Service + Six Levels of Avery Borrowing

In the last fiscal year the Town spent $3.11 million on payments for exempt debt.  If the Avery School is approved in only two years, 2012 and 2013, will that payment be higher. 

In 2012 the payments will be $3.14 million and in 2013 it will be $3.12 million.  Town Treasurer Robin Reyes said those increases amount to “only pennies per person.”  Beginning in 2015 debt service payments drop below the $3 million mark.

The biggest impact of the project on taxes will be felt in the years 2016 and 2017.  At that point the average home will pay an additional $87 a year, though because even more debt will have rolled off by then the total impact of exempt debt will be less than it is today.

“Effectively there won’t be a change in exempt taxes over the next four or fives years because what is rolling off gets replaced by the Avery School project,” Lawlor told the Finance Committee.