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Maintenance, repair costs have grown for HS, School Board hears

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

After Estes Construction management completed its latest visit to the Charles City High School, Project Executive Pete Perez shared one experience with the facility.

“I got lost,” Perez told the Charles City Board of Education on Monday night. “But I’m getting better with the circles.”

The ‘circles’ are three separate wings of the high school and were inspected along with the rest of the building by Perez and his associates as they did an updated assessment on the condition and needs of the facility. As it stands, the current high school area takes up 127,288 square feet, or 247 square feet per student.

The last assessment done by Estes at the high school was in 2012, Perez told the board, and since then the needs as identified by Estes personnel have grown.

In 2012, Estes Construction identified 23 high school facility needs for the district to plan to address, Perez told the board. This year, Estes identified 39 items, with many of the 2012 items included in the list, although some changes such as lighting had already been made.

Construction costs have risen between 3 percent and 6 percent annually, Perez said, which raises the construction costs for some items already quoted.

“Just to give you a sense, in 2012 … those 23 items were approximately $13,587,200,” Perez said. “That is not escalating that dollar to today’s dollar –– just to give you a sense in order of magnitude of what we’re talking about.”

Items include “Health/Life Safety” category items, ranging from asbestos-containing materials in the flooring to non-ADA compliant bathroom facilities; “Building Improvement” items, such as repairing existing ceiling damaged by leaks or resurfacing pavement on the delivery driveway; and “Site Improvement” items, such as adding new grading to prevent unsafe walking conditions.

Total costs to repair could range from $12,760,165 to $19,360,913, depending on how the district chooses to address facility issues, Perez said. He later added that the district staff has done a “great job of upkeep and maintaining as best as they can without tearing out existing systems.”

“These are just a snapshot of the things we observed,” Perez said.

Board members discussed briefly Perez’s updates, noting the price of repair projects that he presented.

“For you to have looked at this high school in 2012 and again, in 2017 and to tell us the to-do list to bring things up to today’s standards would be in the high end of $19.3 million is a big wakeup call,” board member Lorraine Winterink said. “Just to maintain that building would be the high end of $19.3 million. Or, the challenge is to figure out what could we do instead of maintaining that building.”

“If you maintain, you still have circles that people get lost in,” Board President Scott Dight said.

A final written assessment by Estes Construction will be available to the district within the next two to three weeks, Perez said, before members of the district begin visiting other high school facilities in the state.

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