A rendering of a proposed new building for Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich.
HARWICH – By a 3 to 1 margin, residents overwhelmingly voted for a new building for Cape Cod Regional Technical High School Tuesday.
The school has a total price tag of $128 million with the Massachusetts School Building Authority covering more than 30 percent of the cost.
The remaining $86 million will be spread across the district towns by enrollment percentage.
The towns which make up the school district include Barnstable, Mashpee, Yarmouth, Dennis, Harwich, Brewster, Chatham, Orleans, Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown.
Chatham
The vote total for all communities in the school district, excluding Wellfleet, was 11,945 for and 3,975 against.
Superintendent Robert Sanborn said he was extremely appreciative of the voters.
“It’s a testament to our students, our teachers and everyone who has worked at our school over the last 43 years,” Sanborn said. “That they’ve built a reputation that would engender such support from a vast district, some of whom really didn’t know we exist at times.”
Sanborn said the voter do know the economic and workforce development role the school fills on Cape Cod.
The vote culminates a five-year process by school officials.
“We started with our town officials, finance committees, boards of selectmen and town councils and we said, ‘it’s coming,’” Sanborn said. “Then we said again a year before it happened, ‘I think it’s coming real soon.’”
Sanborn also believes transparency was the key to the overwhelming support at the ballot box.
“Everything was on our website. We shared numbers as we got them, whether they were good or bad at the time,” Sanborn said. “I think it’s a transparent and just and endless communication machine.”
Sanborn and other school officials spent the last few weeks hosting several public forums across the district urging residents to vote for the new facility.
“It was telling them what the impact would be on their taxes, telling them what we were trying to do with this project,” Sanborn said.
Proponents for the new school said the current building, which was constructed over 40 years ago, had outlived its usefulness. Those opposed said $127 million was too much money to spend when many local school districts are in need as well.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for the fall of 2019 with completion expected in the summer of 2021.
Towns are not expected to feel a financial impact until 2020.
Vote totals for each town are listed below:
Barnstable: 2267 Yes 989 No
Brewster: 1075 Yes 357 No
Chatham: 637 Yes 119 No
Dennis: 1535 Yes 516 No
Eastham: 693 Yes 178 No
Harwich: 1503 Yes 491 No
Mashpee: 677 Yes 203 No
Orleans: 1246 Yes 266 No
Provincetown: 220 Yes 32 No
Truro: 191 Yes 31 No
Yarmouth: 1901 Yes 793 No
The towns of Harwich and Eastham also voted for a proposition 2 ½ override to cover their share of the cost.
The town of Barnstable approved an override during a vote last month.
By BRIAN MERCHANT, CapeCod.com NewsCenter
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