Councilors and city staff were hesitant to include the construction cost in the capital improvement plan because it isn’t finalized and it doesn’t include ongoing operating costs.

The city wants to commit to the design phase of the project before determining how to support construction costs.

“We won’t get anywhere unless we get some of that real deep planning design on the project,” Galvin said.

Murphy said the city also couldn’t cover the cost and remain in its debt policy.

“We need to continue on a growth arc in revenue just to cover the things that are already in the CIP,” he said.

Galvin said funding the project needs to be a priority.

“If we don’t begin to tackle the question of the school modernization, we won’t ever do it,” Galvin said. “We have been just routinely pushing that off. … Instead of saying we can’t do things, how do we figure out how to do things?”