It took years of citizen advocacy and about $1.5 million, but Edmunds Middle School is now accessible to people with mobility issues. 

Or at least mostly accessible. While a newly installed lift will make it possible for students in wheelchairs to attend the school, there’s still work to be done, noted Burlington School District Superintendent Jeanne Collins in remarks at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday afternoon. The event was attended by dozens of Burlington parents, students, disability advocates, politicians and school administrators. 

“All I ask is we don’t stop here,” she said. “We have a whole campus — let’s keep going.”

This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2011.

Aimee Picchi is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Boston Globe, AOL's DailyFinance and Seven Days. Before moving to Burlington with her husband and two children, she was a staff reporter at Bloomberg News in New York.

18 replies on “After $1.5 Million and Years of Citizen Advocacy, Edmunds Middle School Unveils New Elevator”

  1. This exchange highlights how Telecom has seeped into other areas of policy. If there is an upside to this fiasco it’s that the public will be demanding more accountability from government for the foreseeable future.

  2. Fred, I watched that meeting on TV. You originally asked for $226m. The request was modified to $92m, which was inextricably linked to an eventual bonding of $226m (“phased”). Leopold stated during the 9/15/08 CC meeting that the City had an “unutilized capacity of about 20 million dollars” FOR THE WHOLE CITY. He explained that even attempting to borrow that money, coupled with an authorization to borrow more, could result in a downgrade for the City’s bond rating. He made it clear that a voter authorization for the level of money you were asking for could well result in such a downgrade. His explanation was very clear and simple. Rather than withdraw the proposal, you continued to tout its benefits.I would also point out that you collectively had put the original bond request in ONE DAY after receiving the consultant’s report, without asking the City what its actual borrowing capacity was. Press conferences and meetings were held with parents that got them all excited about the great improvements that this windfall was going to bring. Parents were asked to lobby their neighbors to ask the CC to bring the $92m bond to a vote. All before anyone asked a simple question that would have revealed that anything in the ballpark of the bond amount was impossible.Finally, post the breakdown of the $1.5m expenditure, even a rough one. I find it hard to believe that preconstruction necessitated a 10-20x increase in the cost over new construction.

  4. Tim you are right, it’s not evidence of malfeasance or stupidity, well at least not malfeasance. However, neither is $17 Mil missing from the cash pool or cable installations that cost 4-6X what is considered normal. But, it may make some people wonder.

  5. So we can expect several houses to be bought and demolished and a parking garage erected next to the elementary school? Sorry Fred, fat chance you are ever going to get voter approval for that one. As for the elevator, so $1.4 Million or so was the cost of running some new electrical and to make some structural modifications? Who did the work, was it put out to competitive bid? You know, for accuracy’s sake…

  6. A couple of quick responses, simply for the sake of accuracy. 1) Edmunds was built well before elevators were standard equipment, and long before we began to take issues of accessibility seriously. The bulk of the cost came from work necessary to make it physically possible to install the elevator, and from the improvements needed in the school’s old electrical system (which will have far-reaching benefits for the school going forward).2) While the total cost of the District’s Master Plan was $226 million, the Board (and I) did not keep lobbying for a bond in that amount after consulting with the City administration. We had serious conversations with the City about what was affordable, and came up with a prioritized list that was included in the $9.7 million bond passed a couple of years ago. To be clear, the issues identified in the Master Plan are not going away, and they will need to be addressed in the years to come.

  7. Elevators are enormously expensive and maintenance costs are also huge. It’s in part why big boxes are…big boxes, they design a floor plan that puts everything on one level, so that an elevator is not needed. over the lifetime of some structure the savings can be in the millions.For an exisitng older structure such as Edmunds, the costs are much higher. You have to go into a century old structure and drill a jack hole into bedrock, build an elevator shaft that meets modern building, fire and access codes and do it without shutting down the school. Some school districts would walk away from the school and put up a new building elsewhere, but Burlington wants to keep it’s neighborhood schools. I agree that it’s a high price to pay, but it is not evidence of malfeasance or stupidity.

  9. Fred Lane sat in front of the CC and lobbied them to put a $200+ million bond in front of voters after Leopold had just explained to him that it would be literally impossible for the City to borrow that much. Not difficult, IMPOSSIBLE. And he kept right on asking for it. ‘nuf said.

  10. Only in Burlington can spending 1.5 Million dollars on an elevator be considered a success. When commercial elevators cost 75,000 – $150,000 plus installation one has to wonder if Collins is using some of Kiss and Leopold’s strategies to steal taxpayer money?

Comments are closed.