Charles City school board workshops high school improvement plan

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Community School Board discussed projects to address the high school building’s needs and how best to fund them during a special work session on Tuesday, Dec. 17.

Following last year’s failed attempt to pass a $27 million bond referendum to completely renovate the high school, which would have included the construction of a new auditorium, the district has since gone back to the drawing board.

Earlier this year, the district contracted Modus Engineering to perform an assessment on the high school, identifying the building’s most immediate needs and making proposals to address those needs.

The bulk of the Modus Assessment focuses on HVAC upgrades to the high school, with proposals for the gymnasium, cafeteria, kitchen, administration offices and the three circle buildings.

These areas are currently heated by outdated steam boilers operating at 70% efficiency or less and have no air conditioning at all. Proposals for most of these areas include removing the existing steam heaters and piping and replacing them with roof-mounted Variable Air Volume (VAV) units to provide both heating and cooling.

In addition to the HVAC upgrades, the assessment also identified issues with the building’s art room. After finding that the sanitary sewer around the art classroom had accumulated sediment, it was determined that the school would benefit from replacing the sink traps with solid waste interceptors. Meanwhile, the art room’s kiln needs a hood and a new exhaust system to better control excess heat and humidity.

It was emphasized that the proposals made for the building do not include major renovations, cosmetic improvements or projects that would otherwise substantially change the building layout. The board is currently only looking at projects that address the building’s mechanical and electrical needs.

“It gets done what we need to get done,” said Board President Bruce Koebrick.

Outside of new sink traps for the art room, the proposal does not address the building’s plumbing needs either. The district is addressing those issues separately, having already replaced one of the building’s most troublesome plumbing areas earlier this summer.

Additionally, while the Modus Assessment did propose replacing the building’s steam boilers with hot water boilers, the school is already in the process of doing that, resulting in that aspect of the proposal being removed.

Between the seven HVAC upgrades, associated electrical system upgrades and art room improvements, the estimated total for the proposals comes out to $2.766 million. The Modus Assessment breaks down each aspect of the proposal into 11 phases, each priced within the district’s ability to pay for out of its annual facilities budget.

“We have about $850,000 that we do our capital projects with,” said Director of Operations Jerry Mitchell.

With most phases of the project ranging between $250K and $400K, the initial idea was to dedicate about half of the capital projects budget to a phase each year over 11 years. The downside to this approach is that it would limit the district’s ability to perform capital improvements for the rest of the buildings during this time and that spreading the project out over the course of a decade would dramatically increase the overall cost, with Mitchell estimating that the $2.7 million project today would probably cost closer to $5 million by the time it would be completed in 2035.

Instead, the board is looking at borrowing $3 million against the district’s one cent sales tax (SAVE) revenue for a six-year loan that would allow the school to do everything at once.

The district is already utilizing SAVE revenue to pay down its loan for the middle school building, but that will be paid off in 2029. By making small payments on a six-year loan for the first three years and larger payments for the last three years, the district can borrow the $3 million with little impact on its existing SAVE revenue through 2031.

Borrowing against SAVE can also be done without a bond referendum, requiring only a series of public hearings and notices. Unless a petition is presented calling for an election, the district can move forward with the bond as needed.

No decisions were made at the workshop, but the plan for the district to address the high school’s long-standing utility needs is coming into view.