By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — A meeting of the City Council held during Thursday’s snowstorm appears to have cleared a path for the city’s middle school bond project to begin moving again.

The six council members in attendance conducted a lengthy review of concerns over the proposed site of the two new middle schools.
That review included discussions with the project’s architect, environmental consultant and legal counsel.
The session ended at 10:45 p.m. Thursday with a 5-to-1 vote authorizing the use of Hamlet Avenue as the school site while also granting a boost in funding for project.
The immediate result of the council’s decision was an agreement on Friday covering the purchase of the ACS Industries properties at Hamlet.
That accord will set the stage for two large buildings at the site to be cleaned of asbestos and razed at the end of the month, according to Joel D. Mathews, director of planning and development for the city.
 “It needed to happen, and it happened expediently with the support of the School Committee and the City Council,” Mathews said of the site acquisition work. “Now we can concentrate on the start of the project and putting the clean-up plan into place.”
City voters had approved $74 million in bond funding for the project in August, but the council action will allow an additional $6 million in grants, private contributions and federal borrowing to be used to cover added costs for remediation and project delays.
It is expected that the resulting $80 million total will ensure the city gets a clean site for the new buildings while converting a blighted former mill site into an anchor point for future growth.
After listening to a review of the project’s plans — and hearing assurances from the consultants that the proposed clean-up will result in a clean, safe site — Councilman John F. Ward said he had never considered any other site for the project truly viable. The added information satisfied his concerns about Hamlet, Ward said.
Council members Suzanne J. Vadenais, William Schneck, Stella Brien, a council newcomer, and President Leo T. Fontaine also voiced support for the original site after asking questions about the changes and added costs.
The panel did hear an objection to the use of Hamlet from C. Michael Blake, the only resident in attendance asking to speak before the final vote.
Blake said he supported the $74 million bond, but could not support the changes that would increase  the  final bill to $80 million.
Rather than bump up funding for the original site, Blake suggested the council use Barry Field for one school and build the second school where today’s middle school stands.
Earlier in the evening, Mathews had offered the council many reasons for dismissing that option,which he restated before the panel’s vote.
Barry Field could house one school, he noted, but would come with higher costs for transporting student to that distant section of the city.
The alternative siting would place the second building on Aylsworth Avenue, at the former Woonsocket Sponging property. That move would require paying for a new round of site testing and clean-up planning, and would also result in further construction delays.
Each month the start date is delayed adds $500,000 to the bottom line if the schools are to be completed by June 2010, Matthews said. The work must be done by that date to access state reimbursement, he said.
The city stands to collect 82 percent reimbursement on $70 million in project costs. That payback could drop to 64 percent if any site other than the primary and alternate sites initially submitted to the state were to be selected, he noted.
Councilman Roger Jalette, who recently won a return term on the panel, remained silent through the discussion. He made his opposition known as the panel prepared to vote on the changes.
Jalette said he didn’t know how he would vote when the discussion began, but he didn’t like seeing costs go up.
He also remained concerned about the proposed cleanup and the possibility that unforeseen costs could still surface for the property.
“I do want the two schools but not in that location. There are just too many questions, too many ifs,” Jalette said.
That opinion gained no support from Jalette’s fellow councilors.
To step away from the work already done in planning for the schools at Hamlet Avenue would be a mistake, Councilor John F. Ward argued.
The plan for Hamlet includes a $2 million clean-up contribution from ACS that, combined with other grants and expected operational savings, leaves approximately $1 million to be covered by new financing, Ward maintained.
The other site options would not bring in comparable offsets, making the Hamlet still the best option for the new schools, according to Ward.
“If you throw away that opportunity, you will leave this site (Hamlet) as an eyesore, and that will be the image of Woonsocket that we have,” he said.
“This is legacy work and this about having vision as to the way the city is supposed to look.”
Schneck said he too saw benefits for both students and the city at large.
“Councilman Ward is right, we can’t afford not to take advantage of this opportunity,” he said.
Stella Brien said she believes the primary concern is providing city children with a new middle school — and that the Hamlet site provides the best opportunity to accomplish that goal.
“There will never be a scenario that is entirely perfect, but we have to make a decision and consider that the benefits of this site outweigh the additional $6 million cost,” she said.
Vadenais, who serves on the school building committee, said that coming into the meeting, she’d had questions about the proposed cleanup. Those questions were answered for Vadenais by the experts in attendance Thursday.
That group included John A. Chambers of Fuss & O’Neill, environmental consultants; Scott Dunlap of Ai3 architects; and Sean O. Coffey, legal counsel.
 In the end, Vadenais said it becomes a question of whether the schools will be built or not.
“As Joel Mathews said, we should have built the school in 1969 and people didn’t vote for it,” she said. “We should have done it 20 years ago. and if we don’t do it now it’s only going to cost us more money in the future.”
Fontaine, who had offered a list of questions during the site review discussion, concluded that the site selection for the schools was a complicated issue with many different aspects to consider.
The primary issue is still the need to build new middle schools for city students, he said, and that was the issue the voters supported in approving the $74 million bond for the project.
“Have there been bumps in the road along the way — yes there have been,” he said. “Does that mean we are being dishonest with the voters in going forward with this? No, it doesn’t.”
 The City Council’s responsibility, he said, was to make sure that the site was going to be safe for the city’s children.
“This going to be safer than any other site that we have,” he said.