By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

After years of searching for a new school site, Auburn school officials have settled on a 60-acre parcel off Hooksett and Dollard roads, near Route 101’s Exit 2. Purchase of the land – offered by the Dollard family at $650,000 – will require voter approval at the March 17 School District Meeting.

On Monday, Feb. 13, school board members seemed confident they’d found a good deal. “We were looking at 30 acres for the same type of price three years ago,” said school board member Robert Hayes, who’s been involved with finding land and a new school since the search process began in 1999.

In 2000 and 2001, voters rejected $7.2 million and $7.8 million construction plans that would have brought a new middle school to a Raymond Road site.

Since then, the Land Search Committee surveyed 34 parcels and has run into problems commonly faced by New Hampshire developers.

“By the time you start talking 60 acres, you’re going to start saying a couple of things – ledge, water or both,” said Hayes.

Officials admitted that the Dollard property appears to have both ledge and wetlands, but said it compared well to the other properties eyed over the last three years. “We looked at those 34 pieces of property, and if they weren’t ledgy, they were wet,” said school board and land search committee member Kathleen Porter.

Purchasing the land won’t require any new taxation, as officials have been adding to an expendable trust fund since 2001. Last year, voters approved $545,000 in state adequacy money for the fund, which currently has about $677,000.

Officials presented an image of the property with an 800-student capacity school complete with an access road, an emergency access drive, regulation baseball, softball and soccer fields, and a space for a multipurpose field or additional parking.

Auburn Village School currently supports 616 kindergarten through eighth-grade students. Three portable buildings, each housing two classrooms, have been added in recent years to handle growing class sizes and required programming.

“At the existing school, every nook and cranny is being used,” school board Chairman Elaine Hobbs said after the meeting. “We’re maxed out.”

Officials stressed, however, that any discussions about what could be built on the land would have to wait until after the purchase.

When one community member asked the board if it was considering a new kindergarten- through-eighth-grade school, Porter replied, “We’ve made no determination about what would be built on the land.”