UL facilities plan could cost district $46 million
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BELMONT -- Union Local School District will hold a series of meetings to seek input from staff and the community about a school facility improvement plan that could cost $46 million.
John Jefferis, project manager with PCS & Manage in Barnesville, and David Sneed, education planner and consultant, presented Thursday a plan to the school board about what improvements the district could make. Board members had commissioned the educational facilities plan earlier this year. The purpose is to meet the needs imposed by aging infrastructure and buildings.
"It's an evaluation of space and building components and codes and standards," Sneed said of the plan. "The first phase, of course, is to complete this assessment. It addresses all those issues, as well as some issues the staff brought up."
Sneed said one of those issues is the need for space.
"All that was factored in. We gave a price tag for all of that," he said. "We've got a comprehensive plan that will involve curriculum, operations, maintenance, school access and safety."
Sneed said the bus garage and maintenance buildings also were evaluated, as were the athletic fields. The total cost of the initial plan is about $46 million.
"That would be a price to bring all existing facilities up to current codes and standards and staff preferences as to how they'd like the rooms," said Sneed who also said the amount is not concrete and depends on what the district chooses to include and prioritize.
"We're jumping in with that number at this point in time," Sneed said.
The next step is for the Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan Committee of people from the school staff and from the community to hold a series of meetings to review the plan and discuss priorities.
The first such meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Monday at the high school common room on the district campus.
"The goal of the final plan will be: what are the priorities for the next 10 years?" Sneed said. "Those are the things that will be in the final plan, and it may or may not be $46 million. It'll be whatever the priorities are. It may take 20 years to do all the things here, and there may be ways and options just to save money. That figure's going to be fluid."
Sneed and Jefferis pointed out load noise from the heating and air conditioning system as one of the top issues among staff, as well as a need for space for pre-schoolers because those areas were added after the building was designed. They also pointed out that the roof has not been replaced since 1998.
However, they commended the board for attentively maintaining the facilities to get the most use out of them. While the heating and air conditioning systems have exceeded their life limit, regular repairs have kept them operational.
Superintendent Ben Porter said the plan will be invaluable in moving forward.
"The plan itself hits on each building and gives specific breakdowns," Porter said. "It's a hefty price tag, but it's not something that we're going to attack, trying to come up with millions of dollars. We are going to look at prioritizing and right now look at what we can afford to do and what priorities the board establishes for us."
Porter said the district looks forward to input from the committee.
"We've got a committee, a fairly large committee, which is made up of over 50 members including parents, business leaders in our community, education staff," he said. "We want to hear, and we want our community to help us pinpoint the needs that they see in preparing our kids for the future. There's going to be opportunities for our kids within our area, which typically in the past hasn't been the case."
Porter said the possibility of a levy has not been discusses.
"At this point, our plan is to use the revenues that may come in from oil and gas and so forth to be able to chip away at this cost," he said. "That's kind of the first priority on where we want to go.
"Our facilities are 20 years old," Porter said. "In the past it's been…putting out fires. We want to get ahead of the game and be able to prioritize and plan how our funds are to be used."
He also pointed out the state of the pavement at the elementary school as one area that is likely a high priority.
"We have a population down there close to 750 students," he said. "The traffic flow and the pattern of traffic down there and the availability of parking is something we really need to look at."
Porter said another priority is to provide high-speed internet for the digital curriculum.
The entire board of Billy Porter, Ed Stenger, Terry Puperi, Dan Lucas and Koel Davia attended.