Schools

District 308 Tackles Capital Improvement Projects

The district has about $12.9 million in work for the district's 22 facilities.

With a growing to-do list and only so much money going around, officials are classifying capital improvements projects for the district’s 22 facilities based on urgency.

Of the $12.9 million in projects, officials have said about $6.4 million are considered high priority, such as seal-coating and restriping the parking lots at most of the buildings, and purchasing several motorized brooms for snow removal for many of the school buildings, which cost about $4,000 each.

Director of Buildings and Grounds Bill Baumann told board members Monday the district currently has five brooms, and he would like to see them at all of the school buildings.

“They’ve done a great job,” he said. “We’ve cut back on salt use and it eliminates salt from being tracked into the building and damaging the floors. It’s a step up for us.”

The brooms would be used in place of snowblowers.

Some board members questioned whether less brooms would be needed if they were shared between facilities.

But Baumann said there are many sidewalks at each of the district’s buildings.

“There’s so much concrete and only so much time to get (the sidewalks) clean,” he said. “Sharing them is definitely something we thought about but we’d really like to have a broom for each building.”

During Monday’s presentation, some board members suggested items listed in the Operation and Maintenance Fund should actually be a capital improvement requests.

Angie Smith, the district’s director of business services, said items that are part of the O & M fund are paid for from the annual operations budget comprised of funds the district receives annually from local, state and federal sources.

“As budgets have been cut, it is difficult to fund sizable projects from this funding source,” she said. “Items that would be paid for from the capital fund would require the board to issue bonds (debt) to pay for them. These funds would then be used to complete the projects that are approved. This funding source is used for longer term projects which have a longer useful life.”

After receiving direction from the School Board Monday, district officials will reprioritize an reintroduce an updated capital improvement list at the next board meeting set for 7:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 22.

“Some of this we are bringing up now because we’ve gotten out of the cycle of doing them every year like we should so we have quite a bit to catch up on,” Smith said. “But if the board is uncomfortable using financed money for short-term projects, we’ll look at things that have a longer life and move those into the capital requests we’re making.”

Some of those items overdue for maintenance are the district’s parking lots, which Smith said should be seal-coated frequently to ensure that damage is minimized and the surface is protected.

“It is basically like preventative maintenance on your car,” she said. “If you get oil changes as you should, you can avoid a bigger expense down the road."

But as district budgets have been cut, Smith said some of the preventative maintenance has been delayed so monies could be directed towards students through teachers and classroom needs.

"The district now has some areas where reconstruction may be necessary," she said.

Smith said other items on the list include curbs and gutters that were originally planned for some of the newer facilities but which were not installed as a cost saving measure for the construction budgets at the time.

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