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The East Aurora Union Free School District is preparing for its next capital project to upgrade facilities. While plans are still being finalized about the particulars of each building, the board plans to approve the project in August, and it will be up for a public vote in December.
Steve Shchurowsky of Young + Wright Architectural presented a proposal to the school board at a special 7:30 a.m. meeting on June 21 at the middle school library. Shchurowsky said that all of the recommendations come from the 2021 Building Conditions Survey (BCS), a state-mandated review of the school buildings, performed and filed every five years. Roofs, windows, doors, classrooms, laboratories, athletic facilities, parking lots and everything in between are evaluated by experts in the field and the architectural firm before recommendations are made. Young & Wright will be part of the team working on the project.
The BCS is also on file with the State Education Department.
“The goal of this from the state’s standpoint is to allow a district to plan and prioritize the work ahead and make sure that the facilities’ needs are addressed in a timely manner,” he said.
The BCS identified over $30 million in work that could be done at all of the buildings, and within the next few meetings the board will narrow down the scope of the project to between $14 million and $22 million.
The information in the survey is graded within five grading categories: Excellent, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, Non-functioning and Critical Failure. Shchurowsky said of the 600 items inspected, 11 items were graded as Non-Functioning. Examples on his list included the tennis courts at the high school, a disconnected dryer, a damaged air conditioning unit on the roof at Parkdale Elementary and a bike rack and picnic table at an undisclosed school building.
According to Shchurowsky’s presentation, Non-Functioning is assigned to items that are “currently broken and needing work to make it useful.” A grade of Unsatisfactory means that the item is “in need of attention, but still functioning.” He also noted that “some items are corrected ‘in-house’ as soon as they are identified.”
The BCS can be found alongside this article at www.eastaurorany.com.
The BCS says that the athletic complex gets an Unsatisfactory grade with areas of concern at the tennis courts, softball diamond and baseball diamond.
The tennis courts at the high school were resurfaced in the fall of 2018 as part of Phase II of the $23 million 2016 Capital Project. The boys tennis team just wrapped up their spring season playing and practicing on them. The courts do have noticeable cracks to the surface and there are evidence of repairs. Other parts of the athletic complex are in good condition.
“Artificial turf, track and track events were recently installed in 2017 and remain in decent condition,” the survey says. “Natural grass fields remain in decent condition but recommend sandmaster lawn treatment to improve drainage issues. Baseball, softball, and tennis courts are all in need of improvements.”
According to Shchurowsky, the tennis courts were originally placed on a section of land that was formerly a pond when the high school was built over 50 years ago, which is contributing to the deterioration.
Shchurowsky presented a series of options for addressing the tennis courts to the board. One option is to keep the courts where they are and resurface them. Another is to move the tennis courts away from the current site closer to the baseball diamond, expand the courts from six to eight and add lights. There was also a rendering in the presentation for an idea to move the softball diamond from its current location near Sweet Road to join the baseball diamond and proposed expanded tennis courts, making a complex closer to the athletic entrance off of Center Street. There was also a proposal to add an additional turf field to that area, which could be also used by lacrosse, soccer and field hockey teams.
According to the BCS, repairing this portion of the athletic complex is estimated at around $4.2 million.
Other items in the project include updating the public announcement system, clocks, security cameras and the air conditioning at Parkdale.
At the middle school, items include upgrading the library, which could include turning it into a media center outfitted with current technology and completing a renovation to expose the two-story ceiling in this space. When the school was built over 100-years-ago, the portion of the building that currently houses the library was the auditorium with a stage. The former stage is now flush with a cement wall from a capital project years ago.
Other upgrades at the middle school building include updates to the fire alarm system, remodeling bathrooms on each floor, renovating the passenger elevator and updating the science and FACS rooms.
Aside from the athletic field, updates at the high school include painting the gymnasium, updating the bleachers in the pool area and replacing a parking plot, among others.
Young & Wright estimates that the project as proposed would cost $20 million. Rick Ganci of Capital Market Advisors, LLC said that the project could be trimmed back to just over $13 million, with no tax impact on taxpayers. He presented two additional scenarios for cutting back the project that would not impact taxpayers. Each scenario draws money from district reserves. The final scenario increases the project to $22.5 million, uses $1.6 million from reserves and comes with a one percent tax levy. According to Ganci, this would increase taxes by $42 a year for every $100,000 that a property is assessed.
Business Administrator Joanne George reminded the school board that these numbers are estimates and they may fluctuate in the future through the bid process.
“These numbers are our best guess right now to present for authorization. We won’t really know the numbers until they go out for bid,” George said.
If the project is approved by voters in December, it will go on to the design phase before being submitted to the State Education Department for approval. It is estimated that the project would be sent out to bid late summer of 2023 and construction would begin in 2024.
The school board will meet again on July 13 at 7 p.m. in the Middle School library on Main Street and it is anticipated that the members will discuss this project. This meeting coincides with the annual reorganizational meeting. The district hopes that the school board will approve this project by the regularly scheduled Aug. 20 meeting and they said they may schedule a special meeting before this to further discuss the project.
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