For Immediate Release
February 14, 2003
Please Contact: Colin Durrant (617)722-1650 or
Dalié Jiménez, 617-722-1650

State Senate Adopts Senator Barrios’ Amendment to Extend School Building Assistance

In response to an announcement on Tuesday by the Commissioner of the Department of Education imposing a moratorium on school construction and reconstruction projects, the state Senate adopted an amendment on February 13 to an FY03 supplemental budget co-sponsored by Senator Barrios that would allow cities and towns who have approved school construction projects by a vote of the town to be placed on the state’s school construction reimbursement list.

“This is a victory for the children in those cities and towns who have spent countless hours of time, energy and money getting school construction projects approved at the municipal level before heading to the state for reimbursement under the school building assistance program. We recognize that this has been and extremely generous program and the current fiscal climate is very difficult, however, we felt that to deny these few cities and towns the reimbursement that they deserve at such a late hour would have broken faith with our towns and would be devastating to the fiscal and educational well-being of our communities.” said Senator Barrios, co-sponsor of the amendment.

Under the amendment, cities and towns who have received final municipal approval by a favorable vote of the city council or town meeting on or before February 25, 2003 but had not yet been added to the reimbursement list would be placed on the priority waiting list for reimbursement from the state. Given virtually no notice of the moratorium that was announced on Tuesday, many of these cities and towns had spent over of a million dollars on preliminary plans for the projects that in most cases would have to be canceled if there were to be no reimbursement from the state.

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