Just when you were about sick of elections, did anyone mention that Bedford Central School District voters will be going to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 22?

Maybe having it tucked in between Election Day and Thanksgiving will be a good thing for the district, which probably wanted to put a bond for building construction on the ballot about as much as a poke in the eye.

The vote comes as a result of unusually high, escalating construction costs, driving up the cost of the district's building projects. Long delays for approval from the State Department of Education compounded the problem, and as time went on, bids for jobs came in higher than anticipated. Voters will be voting on an "aggregate amount not to exceed $8,903,805," this on top of the $67,760,000 that they approved for the project in January 2002.

If the bond does not pass, wrote Debra Jackson in a letter to community members last week, the board would be able to spend no more than the $67,760,000 amount, and the board "would have the responsibility to determine which projects, or parts of projects, could be completed under the original bond authorization and which ones would not be done."

According to Dr. Jackson, if the bond passes, the board of education will award the remaining high school construction con-tracts. Bids for the renovations at the high school have already been secured, and contractors are holding their prices until January 2006. The next step would be for the board to bid remaining projects in the district — Bedford Hills Elementary School, Fox Lane Middle School, Bedford Village Elementary School, Pound Ridge Elementary School, and West Patent Elementary School — to prevent further price escalation. 'Dr. Jackson says that the district would only borrow as much of the $8.9 million as would be needed to complete the original scope of the construction project.

A piecemeal approach to cutting projects at this late stage could . be a short- and long-term disaster: a potential trauma in the form of unfinished construction and a mountain of debris, not to mention a back-to-the-drawing board discussion that would inevitably incur even higher costs. None of this, it is safe to say, would facilitate the learning process for Fox Lane high schoolers.