DUBOIS – In the DuBois Area Middle School auditorium the DuBois Area School District Board of Directors met to discuss $13,558,635 worth of proposed projects.
The $13.5 million is split between renovations at the Juniata Elementary School, in the amount of $8.3 million. The estimated cost of the long discussed baseball fields at Wasson Elementary School is $3.2 million. The last $1.8 million would go to renovating the former maintenance building at E. J. Mansell Stadium. The figures included $2.8 million split between the projects in “soft costs”. The other project budget figures assumed if the projected started relatively soon. Soft costs are unplanned costs that may pop up, which includes inflation and increase of construction materials if the project is delayed up to a year.
The planned renovations of Juniata Elementary school originate from changes in laws, standards and population since it was constructed in 1966. The structure itself is sound, but changes are still needed.
There is a power transformer inside the school that would be relocated outside. Any students on the second floor of the school have to walk downstairs to find the closest restroom. There are classrooms that empty into another room before students can get into a hallway.
The courtyard would be taken out and filled in with a library on the first floor and two new classrooms on the second floor. A new gymnasium would be added to the school.
The heating system is completely electrical. With the coming deregulation of electrical companies the school district wants to convert to either a natural gas or geothermal system.
“Nobody knows what is going to happen when electric gets deregulated, but estimates are, hey, your bill is going to double. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. It’s market driven,” said Jerry Bankovich of KTH Architects.
The cafeteria area at currently grandfathered in despite being out of current code. Any work done to school would remove the grandfather protection and require the district to bring food services up to code.
There was little discussion against the Juniata renovation as most of the changes are near crucial. According to one school district teacher who spoke later in the meeting, there are classes being taught in a music room where the only a fan for ventilation. It’s the most populated elementary school in the district with 384 students.
Most comments concerning Juniata from the public were about whether school district was going far enough. It was asked if these renovations would leave enough room for a possible school consolidation, or if it would be better just to build a new school facility for the elementary schools instead of fixing up the older cramped schools.
It is expected 20-25 percent of the cost of the renovation, minus site work, is to be reimbursed back to the school district.
E. J. Mansell Stadium will see the maintenance building converted into a second pair of locker rooms, public restrooms for the visitor’s side of the field and an additional press box.
Currently the one set of locker rooms in the middle school have proven less than adequate as the complex has become popular, especially when male and female teams need to use the sole locker rooms. The visitor’s side of the field have to use portable toilets. The three current press boxes have shown a tendency to be filled to capacity plus some during the larger games.
Mansell stadium was predominately eclipsed between the renovations of Juniata and the long simmering debate on the Wasson fields. Still there were a few comments on whether restrooms and a new press box were really needed, and if they were why was the stadium constructed without locker rooms or restrooms in the first place.
Two new fields may be potentially constructed at Wasson Elementary. The school district has fields, but they are regulation softball fields. Most of the $3.2 million budget will be in excavating the dirt from the property to level it off. This is also the only property owned by the school district large enough to house these fields.
There is also an operating gas well near where these two fields will be placed.
In May, Terry Noble had questioned the need of the school district to build two new fields when there are existing fields and came to a meeting in June to defend his public statements.
Most of Noble’s statements were aimed at rejuvenating Shower’s Field. This baseball field sits behind the Magisterial District Judge Patrick Ford’s office. Recently the City of DuBois has repaired bridges and walkways in the area leading to the field.
While there was applause for Noble when he spoke about using other fields such as Shower’s, the public park fields and possibly leasing the Central Catholic baseball field, there was little about the down sides to these options.
It was admitted that the fields at the DuBois public park were likely not big enough, and would need to be expanded.
Shower’s Field needs renovation itself. While the cost would likely to be split by the involved parties, Noble has stated at other meetings it would still cost $1.6 million plus acquiring and demolishing an apartment to bring the field up to regulation size, and this was the cheaper of two options presented by Noble over the last year. This $1.6 million figure came out after the school board in the past asked him if he really thought $500,000 would be enough.
Another proposed problem was what would happen if Central Catholic decided not to lease the field or had their own games when DuBois needed a field.
In all three scenarios the school district would not own any of the fields. In two scenarios the DuBois School District would be putting money towards baseball fields they don’t have an ownership stake in.
It was also revealed Noble was off in his personal estimates. The school board wanted to know where he was getting the $2 million figure prior to this meeting when comparing his promotion of Shower’s Field. It has turned out that Noble was $1 million under what the budgeted figure turned out to be.
An alternative proposed by the public and school board would be to construct one field. It was asked of the board why there was a need for two fields in the first place.
“You came here with two ball fields with no study saying you need two fields,” said Noble.
The expected need came from the possibility of four baseball teams in the future in the district. This includes current varsity and two junior varsity teams with a possible future middle school team.
With the results of the PSSA and No Child Left Behind tests announced less than a month ago, there were come members of the public who were curious why there is more money heading to athletics instead of academics.
As the school district currently stands it will be debt free in 2018. If it takes on the debt from starting all three projects that will be pushed back to 2023.
“It’s not common at all that a school district is able to extend financing only five years,” said Alisha Philips, Vice President of Janney Montgomery Scott, the company that would provide financing for the projects.
The school board is looking to avoid raising taxes at all to fund these projects. However, should the school district go that route it has been calculated that it would take 1.38 mills to pay for them.
This year the school district has come out in the black, a positive gain in income.
Both Philips and Bankovich warned that this is a period of low costs for both materials and rates. They noted that certain rates are at 40 year lows and can only go up. Construction materials are low now, but China’s construction boom has lead to 5-8 percent increase in construction materials a year the last few years. Bankovich mentioned a hypothesized India construction boom that would further increase the cost of construction.
The school board did not vote on anything regarding these projects, nor could they yet. Current plans are to bid out each project individually to see what bids come back to the district.
School Board President Thomas Repine stated to the board and public that the research into these projects began when there was still high hopes for the stimulus money that would be coming down the line instead of the current state of expecting nothing.
Both Noble, local resident Lester Smiley and others raised questions about the meeting beginning at 4:00 p.m. To varying degrees accused the board of meeting early as a way to be less transparent about what was going on. There were other concerns about the board and these projects.
“I think we have a transparency issue here. I hope the board has considered that one of your members is principally involved with your bond issuers, Janney Montgomery,” said Noble, not naming which member.
“Thank you to each and every one of you for coming out here tonight. Please remember that we have board meetings every month,” said Repine.
“On a monthly basis we spend a million dollars. I would certainly hope that you all would come and talk about that too,” said Repine.
Repine invited all those present to start coming to the regular school board meetings to show an interest in the district in all facets as the auditorium crowd was a stark difference to the library held meetings that sometimes only have few people.
“I would love to see a turn out like this when we are talking about curriculum. Academics are the most important thing in this district. We have meetings where there are two, three people in the audience,” said Repine in closing. “I really would like to see people here to be there. That’s how we make progress.”