By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET – It won’t have the final say, but the School Committee, at least, is sticking to the plan to build two 880-student middle schools on a 21-acre parcel of industrial land off Hamlet Avenue and Florence Drive.

The vote came on a resolution read by School Superintendent Maureen Macera during a special meeting in the Career and Technical Center Media Center.

“The Woonsocket School Committee hereby supports and approves the decision to move forward with the construction of two new middle schools at the Hamlet Avenue site at the revised estimated cost of $80 million,” the resolution stated.

The measure also stated the School Committee supports the use of additional funding for the school under the plan listed by the building committee to make up the $6 million overage, and authorizes the administration to file several grant applications that would be included the plan.

The added costs are expected to result from delays occurring as the building committee conducted extensive hazardous materials testing at the former textile mill site and worked out a remediation plan with the Department of Environmental Management that had higher than expected cleanup costs.

The proposed clean up of the Hamlet Avenue site would remove the identified hazardous materials and cap the affected areas to school and residential use standards.

The building committee has also endorsed the addition of funding to the bond project and retention of the Hamlet Avenue location as the best of three alternatives it submitted to a joint meeting of the City Council and School Committee last week.

Although supported by the School Committee last night, Macera said the final say on the site issue will come from the City Council, which has sole authority in the disbursement of city funding.

“We are only putting forward that this committee supports that particular site with the revised expenses,” Macera said of the resolution. The council is scheduled to hold another meeting on the siting question on Thursday in Harris Hall, and could make a decision at that time, she noted.

Members of the committee noted that the alternatives under consideration to build the schools at separate locations, Barry Field and a parcel off Aylsworth Avenue, would come with higher costs over time.

The single site option would allow the district to save both through sharing of some staff, such as the middle school principal’s post, a projected $132,000 annual cost, and also in areas such as school busing costs.

School Committeewoman Michelle Williams questioned what would happen if the grants included in the plan did not materialize, and Macera responded that the difference would be made up under a federal secondary loan program, allowing the city to spread any unfunded costs over a 10-year period at a projected annual repayment cost of $120,000 per $1 million borrowed.

Hopefully the grant funding would be obtained and only a small share of the shortfall would have to be covered by that financing option, Macera added.

  School Committee Chairman Marc A. Dubois voiced support for the retention of the original site while commending City Director of the Planning and Development, Joel D. Mathews, and the rest of the building committee for offering solutions to the concerns over its use.

“This original site is the best site,” he said. “We want two schools on one property to cut down on staff and to cut down on costs,” he said. The proposed site is also centrally located in the city and would also offer a lower expense for transportation, he said.

 Dubois said the project remains the largest ever undertaken by the city and as result “there are going to be many peaks and many valleys,” along its course.

“We will get over this,” Dubois said while voicing a belief the added costs would be addressed along with many other issues that are likely to crop up.

 Also voting for the Hamlet site were Williams, and members Eleanor Nadeau, Anita Ann McGuire-Forcier and Linda M. Majewski.