In November 2020, voters in Newport overwhelmingly approved a bond to build a new Rogers High School after the current Rogers was deemed the worst high school building in the state. Let me repeat the date: November 2020. At the height of COVID. When there was no vaccine. When manufacturing was shut down everywhere. When workers were still home and/or sick and dying. In 2021, the COVID vaccine was finally made available and folks started slowly but surely going back to work…and global prices immediately went through the roof. Remember that lumber and steel prices rose by 50%? Remember the summer of 2021 when there were no construction workers and labor costs went sky high?
All the while, the School Building Committee – a body created by enabling legislation passed by the Rhode Island General Assembly – kept its eyes on the prize and the promise of a new school. And then, just when we thought we were past the COVID inflation surge, when labor costs started to cool, when manufacturing costs started to slow down – not to 2019 levels, no, never that – then Russia invaded Ukraine. And guess what happened? Global prices shot up again. All of them. And Putin’s war is not over.
So here we are in 2023, and some look at the increased costs for the building as incompetence at best and fraud at worst. No, the word is “inflation.” Covid-induced and war-induced INFLATION. Let’s all remember the median price for a home in Newport in November of 2020 was $589,250. That price is now $719,500. Did we really expect the school construction project to buck that trend?
It is a miracle that the School Building Committee and construction partners have been able to limit the cost increase. A miracle. And I for one, thank them.They could have given up. But they haven’t. Because we, the citizens of Newport, made a promise to our children in 2020 and we intend to fulfill it. I urge our elected officials on the city council to follow the lead of the School Building Committee and finish the project without self-created delays.
Aida Neary
Resident and parent
