New Bedford’s faculty lunch program is about to get a serious improve with the creation of a brand new central kitchen to raised serve college students throughout town.
In his weekly look on WBSM, Mayor Jon Mitchell mentioned the New Bedford College Division’s plan to construct a brand new central kitchen to deliver sizzling meals to college students at metropolis faculties that don’t have the means to arrange them in-house.
“As individuals know, we now have a number of older faculty buildings, particularly elementary faculty buildings that date again over 100 years, and plenty of them don’t have their very own kitchens,” Mitchell mentioned.
Proper now, the colleges are offered meals which might be ready within the Metropolis of New Bedford’s College Administration Constructing – the previous New Bedford Excessive College – which Mitchell mentioned “isn’t actually arrange for an enormous distribution service.”
He mentioned that in a year-long course of, the college division sought out a brand new location from which it may distribute meals to varsities and not using a kitchen.
Finally, the property chosen was the previous storage facility for Moby Dick Marine Specialties situated at 449 North Road, behind Ceremony Help and Barry’s Liquors.
“It’s been vacant for a very long time,” Mitchell mentioned. “It’s a yellow brick constructing that goes again to the Nineteen Twenties. It’s truly a really enticing constructing and it’s bought plenty of parking areas.”
Mitchell additionally mentioned the funding mechanism for the brand new kitchen.
“The Metropolis will personal it, and it’ll lease it to the college division,” he mentioned. “The college division will get funds yearly from the U.S. Division of Agriculture for college lunch packages. It has a reasonably wholesome funding stream from the federal authorities that it might use to pay, amongst different issues, the lease funds to the Metropolis, in order that the Metropolis can repay the bonds that it issued to buy the constructing.”
“It’s a good distance of claiming it’s all going to work out, and on the finish of the day, the Metropolis’s not spending any more money to do all that,” he mentioned.
Mitchell praised the work of Assistant Superintendent of Finance & Operations in placing collectively the financing for the challenge, and in addition praised the New Bedford Metropolis Council for approving it.
“It’s going to end in higher meals for the youngsters – mother and father on the market know there’s some want for enchancment on that finish – and it’ll make issues extra environment friendly and in the long term will save the taxpayers extra {dollars},” he mentioned.
