Milton Building News · Town Meeting Vote
Town Meeting Backs $11.75M Labouré Purchase, 168-45, Over Warnings It Could End the Gile Road School
303 Adams St · Oct 19, 2026 · Town Meeting
Town Meeting voted to buy Labouré, over warnings that it could end the Gile Road school plan.
- The vote: 168 yes, 45 no on Article 6, or 78%, comfortably above the two-thirds needed. The purchase still needs a majority of voters in a Dec 15 debt exclusion, which the Select Board has already put on the ballot, town counsel said.
- Design money sent back: Article 7, $1.2M to design a school at Labouré, was referred back to the Select Board on a voice vote, as the Warrant Committee and School Committee had recommended
- Keep our options open: Select Board Chair Winston Daley said it "would be irresponsible for us to not try and acquire" the site "regardless of the school use," pointing to Milton's "lost chances and regrets" such as the Ice House and the East Milton 40Bs. He also said: "I do not know what will be the best option."
- Owning it: supporters argued that town ownership likely heads off another 40B on Adams Street, that the land will gain value even if it is resold, and that voters deserve the final say. "The question isn't simply, can we afford to buy this land? It's can we afford not to," one member said.
- A way to kill Gile Road: a former School Committee chair warned that passage "will functionally foreclose a middle school option at Gile Road." Another opponent told members: "You were told tonight that a vote for Article Six is not a vote on the schools, but it is." Bill White of Precinct 6, who helped lead the drive to rebuild Milton's schools a generation ago, said that if it passed, "we are going to build a school at Labouré on a smaller site that doesn't fully address our challenge."
- Half a solution: opponents said a PreK/K center at Labouré would serve about 300 children while the crowding needs a middle school. They argued the roughly $30M savings come from building a smaller school, not from the site, and that the Gile Road land reverts to conservation use if no school is built there.
- Override fears: a real estate developer and former Planning Board member said holding costs he was quoted ranged from $300,000 to $1M a year, and he counted up to four overrides ahead, for a school, this land, a fire station and operations. Another opponent asked how the town could tell its teachers' union it can't afford raises "when we had $11 million to buy a parcel of land."
- Schools' position: School Committee Chair Mark Loring said the committee took no position on the purchase and that Gile Road "is the primary option." If the town buys Labouré, he said, it would be studied within the state-aided MSBA project. Enrollment is 4,374, about 650 more than when the current schools were built, he said.
- What's next: the School Building Committee was set to pick its architect the morning after the vote, its chair Sean O'Rourke said, with the state pledging 45% reimbursement. "We are going to have a school no matter what," said Select Board Vice Chair Meghan Haggerty, whether at Gile Road or at Labouré.
- Background: Labouré College of Healthcare closed in August 2026. The Warrant Committee backed the purchase Sept 9 and the Select Board signed the agreement Sept 22. The School Committee voted 3-2 on Oct 7 to study a PreK/K center there. The sale proceeds go to Curry College, which now houses Labouré's nursing program, and it expects the money by spring 2027, Daley said. Voters decide Dec 15.
Sources: Town Meeting video (Milton Access TV) · Town Meeting warrant · Town's Labouré purchase page · October Town Meeting page
Earlier coverage: The state-aided school project Labouré is an alternative to (Oct 14, 2026)