Facilities review: Acton‑Boxborough presents $150M needs list; Boardwalk newer but district faces wave of system replacements

District facilities staff and consultants presented a facilities and capital improvement update that highlighted deferred maintenance and prioritized work across the Acton‑Boxborough campus.

The district commissioned Bureau Veritas to perform a facilities condition assessment and Gale Associates to review athletic facilities. The presenters summarized an approximately $150,000,000 ten‑year list of estimated needs—many items are preliminary estimates and will be refined during engineering and design phases. The Boardwalk campus, completed in 2022, has an expected useful life (EUL) of about 50 years and is the district’s first fully electric geothermal‑heated and cooled school; it was not included in the priority replacement list given its recent construction.

Key near‑term needs and funding requests:

- FY25: $700,000 previously allocated; projects include roof work at the high school (bid opening completed; moisture testing underway), junior‑high and high‑school tennis court resurfacing, and emergent HVAC control and chiller repairs at Parker Damon and the junior high.

- FY26 (administration request ~ $1,000,000): engineering to evaluate conversion of older rooftop units to air‑source heat pumps at the high school, security and standby‑power improvements, continued targeted air‑conditioning work at Blanchard and the junior high, fencing and safety upgrades, bus camera system upgrades, and asphalt repairs at high‑need pedestrian areas.

Facilities staff said many older buildings built or renovated in the 1990s and 2000s are now reaching ages where major mechanical and envelope systems need replacement. Chief issues include building envelopes (roofs, flashing, masonry), mechanical‑electrical‑plumbing (MEP) systems, and site/athletic‑field repairs. The capital presentation emphasized that available state (MSBA) and utility incentives, as well as federal funding opportunities related to decarbonization, influence which projects can be advanced and how they should be designed to capture incentives.

“It doesn’t mean we haven’t replaced systems; we’ve done a lot,” the district’s capital project manager said, “but we’re starting to see that stuff pile up now.”

Administrators noted the trade‑offs in timing projects: deferring large work increases long‑term costs due to inflation; borrowing remains a possible approach to stabilize schedules but carries interest‑cost tradeoffs.

The School Committee did not take binding votes on capital projects at the meeting. Committee members asked clarifying questions about whether cooling becomes a health and safety issue; facilities staff said extreme indoor temperatures (exceeding about 85°F in classrooms) are treated as health‑safety concerns and prioritized accordingly.

The administration said it will continue to explore MSBA, MassSave and federal incentives, and urged that engineering work in FY26 would better define the cost and timing of multi‑year conversions such as moving rooftop units to heat‑pump systems.