As the Auburn Enlarged City School District explores future maintenance and upgrades for its facilities, we expect the end result to be a tightly targeted capital project proposal that reflects feedback from members of the community.

The district's present five-year capital improvement plan was discussed this week as part of a series of meetings designed to prioritize the most important needs for buildings, grounds and technology upgrades. That's a smart idea, but it's just a first step.

And even at this starting point, some district staff are saying already that this or that project is a “must.”

At this stage, nobody involved should be saying that any particular parts of the plan are absolutely essential, because that kind of attitude helped shape last year's $15.7 million capital project that was later pulled from consideration when district leaders realized the taxpayers would not support it.

There are certainly some building needs and improvements in classroom technology that are more important than others. And there may be some improvements that can be made to athletic fields and others that simply need to be put off because of affordability issues.

Going forward, the public needs not only to be kept well-informed about the status of plan, but it needs to be able to offer its own ideas.

What we'd like to see, before any firm decisions are made, is a work-in-progress capital plan with cost estimates to be presented to the public for study. A well-publicized town hall-style meeting or two to debate the specifics of that plan should follow. Only after this consideration is given to the items the taxpayers believe are most important, can the district move forward with a concrete proposal.

The board should operate with a clear goal - a project that will be supported at the polls.