RANDOLPH – Randolph Central School District residents voted in favor of purchasing the property adjacent to the high school last week.

“Proposition No. 1, Six Main St. Property Purchase” passed with 200 people voting “yes” and 158 voting “no.” A total of 361 people voted, with 10 absentee ballots. Three votes were voided, which often happens when someone signs in to vote but doesn’t successfully cast their ballot in the booth.

Michael Evans, Randolph Board of Education president, said he would like to thank everyone for voting. He said now that the proposition for the property purchase has passed, the board will be looking at other options in relation to the district’s current capital project.

Superintendent Kimberly Moritz said she met with the architect on Thursday. According to Moritz, architects from Cannon Design are preparing to present to the board a plan for parking on this new property on Jan. 13. The presentation will include cost estimates, as compared to the current plan.

Moritz said it will now be possible to alter the parking lot layout near the athletic field and change the walkway to make it safer.

“In fact, if we determine that it’s preferable and cost effective, as well as aesthetically pleasing to move this parking lot to the new property, then the athletic field lot and tennis courts will remain unchanged pending a successful approval by the New York State Education Department (NYSED),” she said.

Evans said the architects will do a revised plan. They’ll look at keeping things exactly the same or very, very similar to how they currently are at the top, by the athletic fields.

“They’ll do a design for a parking lot at the bottom,” he said. “We’ll take a look at the new design and see what their rough estimate is for the cost and what suggestions they have.”

According to Evans, the board will also take into account some of the comments people have made about the use of the property. He said quite a few people strongly agreed that the school should own that property, but they were opposed to putting a parking lot down there. They thought it should be left natural as a green space, which would enhance the look of the front lawn of the school.

“There were quite a few comments like (that), so we told these people at the meeting that we will certainly take that into consideration,” he said. “The board had discussed that idea of making the new property look nice – perhaps berm it and plant some shrubbery, not just plow it off flat and put a parking lot there.”

About 20 district residents with both positive and negative comments were in attendance at the Dec. 8 public hearing. Evans said the board reminded everyone of all the ideas, design layouts, estimates and other planning prior to the capital project vote. He said there will be additional meetings and more discussions on the current project as the design firms up. The notices will be in the agenda for the board meetings and it’ll be publicized.

Evans said there is plenty of time to submit the amendment for approval by NYSED before the project goes to bid.

According to Moritz, the board submitted their plan to NYSED, in September, and their website currently states a 41-week wait for approval.

“We are hopeful they will begin to review our plan in February, but there is a serious shortage of manpower to complete these reviews,” she said. “NYSED is moving to a new process in January in which they will contract out the approvals to architectural firms across the state to try to expedite reviews and approval.”