With the specter of a looming election on the minds of the community, a member of the Montgomery Area School District addressed public concern over the district’s construction of a new Junior/Senior High School around the MAACC.

“I personally took myself off of social media completely when I came in here. There’s a lot of negativity on there. I see there’s a lot coming up with the election,” board member Todd Grimm said during the board’s monthly meeting Tuesday night.

“My concern, not as a school board member, but as a community member, is that we have way too many people worried about whether a school is going to be built or not, than the academics that are happening within the district, and I feel they should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.

Calling the project a “financial burden,” Grimm stressed that while he was a staunch opponent of the project, it has moved too far ahead to simply be stopped in its place.

“There is zero way our community can afford to put $20 million into a hole in the ground,” he said.

“If we stop that project today, we would have to take all those tax dollars that were increased to this point and put it right back into that project to be able to put it back to where it needs to be,” he explained.

“These are numbers that the community is not understanding, not to mention the land development plans and all the re-engineering, because now you’re at a point you’ve got structure, that all has to be re-engineered,” Grimm continued.

“It’s going to take us two more years to stop this and put it back to the same spot that it was, and we’re already going to be $15 million deep at that point before that happens and lawsuits and everything else,” he said, adding that reversing the work done would likely cost between five and $8 million.

“So, we’re up to $18 million and the taxpayers aren’t getting their money back? What are you going to tell taxpayers, we just took all your money, and we have nothing to show for it,” Grimm asked.

“There is no comparable plan to stop this thing. None. When I was put on the board, if you came to me with a comparable plan in July, that we could stop this and not bankrupt this district, legally and financially, we’d have done it,” he said, directing his comments to fellow board members Ed Shrim and Roger McRae.

“No one has a plan, but everybody says, ‘we gotta stop it.’ What’s your plan,” Grimm asked.

“We’re at the point where they were 30 years ago, where we don’t need it, we don’t want it, and we can’t afford it. It’s that simple,” McRae said.

“We don’t need to put it all back. We need our parking back where it was, and we need a soccer field. The rest of it can sit till we figure out something else,” McRae said, suggesting that the existing structure that has been started could be used for a vo-tech program involving other districts as Montgomery used to participate in.

“That’s essentially what we’re building now,” Grimm pointed out.

“We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars that has yet to be spent. It can all be saved. We’re fortunate. We don’t need the building,” McRae said.

“We do,” answered board President Paul Stryker, with McRae responding that repairs could be made to the existing school building.