Cushing donates additional money for public safety building
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

(L. to r.) Cushing Academy Board of Directors member Marc Bingham joined Selectmen Jonathan Dennehy, Mark Carlisle and Christopher Gagnon at a special meeting so the board could formally accept the donation from the school. JOURNAL PHOTO/CAITLYN KELLEHER

Cushing Academy donated additional money for the public safety building, and the building committee now hopes the town's voters will approve the additional money so the building can be completed.

The co-educational boarding school - located in the center of the town - donated an additional $270,000 to the public safety project at the end of April.

"I want to thank them for the generous contribution," Board Chairman Jonathan Dennehy said. "I think this is demonstrative of the great relationship between (Cushing and Ashburnham)."

C u s h - ing Academy Board of Directors member Marc Bingham, an Ashburnham resident, met formally with the Board of S e l e c t m e n and Cushing Headmaster Dr. James Tracy on Thursday, April 26, for the selectmen to accept the donation.

"We hope that at this point it can get this building built," Bingham said.

The Cushing trustees voted unanimously to donate the additional money when they met on April 21 and 22 at their annual meeting. In 2004, the trustees of Cushing approved a single $1 million donation and a donation of $500,000 over the course of 20 years for the project.

The private high school also donated the land where the public safety building will be built.

"(Cushing and Ashburnham) is a very special relationship and the trustees recognize that," Bingham said.

The donation allows true completion of the project to become afforded under the town budget. The town has already signed a letter of intent with B.W. Construction to build the structure, but this contract would keep areas of the building's interior unfinished.

If voters approve the use of the money from Cushing, the money will cover the cost of buying new equipment for the dispatch center, a top layer of paving for the parking lot, as well as a variety of other furniture, equipment and small expenses.

The committee voted at the beginning of April to ask voters at the annual town meeting to approve additional money - approximately $600,000 - which would be covered under the town's levy limit. The additional money would be to cover those costs as well as the costs finishing the detention cells and the police and fire locker areas.

But that option still left the training room/bunk area and the masonry exterior unfinished. Town officials say the additional work would have been too expensive to complete within the levy limit.

The donation from Cushing makes completing the training area and the masonry work on the exterior an affordable option within the town's budget limit.

The Building Committee voted on Thursday, April 26, to recommend voters continue to support the $600,000, which is enough to complete all the work.

"The committee is staying pretty solid with where they thought the people and the town could absorb," committee member Lincoln Stiles said.

If voters approved the additional money it would require approximately $55,000 from the town budget until the loan is paid off. The expectation is that the money would not be built into the budget until Fiscal Year 2010 because of the timing of payments and borrowing.

Town officials have been very clear that it would not come out of a specific department's budget.

Two-thirds of voters need to approve the extra borrowing at Saturday's town meeting for these aspects of the project to be completed. The voters even need to approve the borrowing if only the extra money from Cushing is going to be used.