Albany

Albany school officials are rallying to come up with a more palatable proposal to expand and renovate the high school after residents rejected a $196 million referendum by just 103 votes.

The referendum was ultimately decided by absentee voters, whose ballots were counted Tuesday and Thursday after a too-close-to-call outcome on election night, Nov. 3, that had the project losing by a razor-thin margin of 10 votes. After two days of counting more than 600 absentee ballots, the Albany County Board of Elections tallied a total of 5,897 against and 5,794 votes in favor of the project.

"Obviously I'm extremely disappointed for the students of Albany," said Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard on Thursday. "I thought we put together a really good plan and concept around what a high school could be."

The 41-year-old high school on Washington Avenue suffers from leaky skylights, roofs and a jury-rigged heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. The district, anticipating enrollment to hit 3,000 at the high school, hoped to package these necessary repairs into a larger project that would address a growing study body and instructional, safety and security inefficiencies in the current layout. It also would have included an indoor track.

Voters polled on Election Day complained of the project's hefty price tag and tax impact, which would have been an extra $30 to $77 a year for homeowners with assessed values ranging from $150,000 to $200,000. That could be why voters in the homeowner-heavy fourth, eighth, 14th and 15th wards opposed it.

"I will take ownership of my inability to communicate the cost so that people understood you're not paying for a $196 million high school," Vanden Wyngaard said. "When you get it all finished, it comes out to 12 cents a day. But I couldn't convince these 100 people to make a difference, so I'll own that and reflect on that and think about how I can do that differently."

The high school's fate is now back in the hands of the school board, which must decide whether to send the same project back to voters for consideration at another time, send a revised project back to voters, or forgo a single capital project and handle repair and space needs piecemeal. The district has said all along that the last option would be the most expensive in the long run.

On Thursday, school board president Ginnie Farrell confirmed the facilities committee will meet Wednesday and the board will meet Thursday to discuss next steps. The committee will make recommendations to the board, though when those recommendations will come remains uncertain. The goal, she said, is to come up with a new plan "sooner rather than later" because the building "needs work now."

"I think that a lot of the people in the city understand how important this (proposed) high school is for our kids," she said. "I think that when it's that close, I think that's really the message."

Vanden Wyngaard said the close margin indicates "an awful lot of people" were OK with the price tag, but added that she would urge the board to come up with a plan that brings it down to something more palatable.

"In my opinion, we need to go back to the drawing board and give it a shot again because it's too important to let it go," she said. "And so with that, I believe that if I can do my communicating better, and come out with a number that people don't get scared just looking at, then I remain hopeful."

The day-end tally Thursday originally showed a 99-vote defeat, but the board of elections ultimately decided to count four "no" ballots that had been set aside in an envelope for no apparent reason. The ballots all appeared valid, and no one objected to their being counted.

Six absentee ballots with extraneous markings were challenged during the count by Albany school board Vice President Sue Adler, who voted for the project, and Ellen Roach, an apparent winner of a school board seat, who was a vocal opponent of the project.

Official tallies, including the final vote totals for school board candidates, won't be known until all ballots are run through the voting machines.

bbump@timesunion.com • 518-454-5387 • @bethanybump