North expansion needs reserve fu

North expansion needs reserve funds, BOE says

Jonathan Herrmann news-herald.net

Loudon County Board of Education during a workshop Monday afternoon discussed the need to take a small amount from reserves to cover some unexpected construction costs.

With the fine arts facility under construction at North Middle School, the local fire marshal has tacked on some new requirements. The building will need a cooling door, a voice panel for a fire alarm, extension of a masonry firewall to the roof of the structure and metal wrap and coping.

“It’s not necessarily uncommon for the state fire marshal’s office to say, ‘Yep, you’re good,’ and then the local fire marshal to come in and say, ‘Oh, by the way, you’ve got to have these things’,” Jason Vance, director of schools, said.

The cooling door, at a cost of $2,439, has been paid out of a $10,000 contingency built into the project, which leaves $7,561. However, the additional needs total $11,296.

An extra $2,253 was added to match the roofing material to what is currently in place at NMS, bringing total added costs to $13,549.

“There’s a transition between the new building and the band room, and right now we’ve got shingles slated to be on there,” Mike Garren, assistant director of schools, said. “So to upgrade those shingles to a metal roof would be $2,200 and that would match the metal coping. ... It would be less maintenance and look a lot better. For the price it’s not a bad want.”

Rather than use the remainder of the contingency and cut $6,000 in costs from other places, Vance suggested taking the full $13,549 out of the school’s reserve funds, bringing the total cost from the reserves to $160,549.

“If you didn’t use every penny of it, whatever you didn’t use would go back in the fund balance after you were finished with the duration of the project,” Vance said.

Taking that approach leaves the remainder of the contingency for other unexpected expenses.

“If we eat all of our contingency up then we run the risk of delaying the project one more time because we’ll have to come back to the board one more time and get the county commission’s permission to utilize our funds the way we think need,” Vance said.

Craig Simon, BOE chairman, questioned whether the county could be approached to provide the $13,549 out of the Adequate Facilities Tax.

“I’m not saying you can’t, that’s always a choice,” Vance said. “I just wouldn’t because remember we asked for ($750,000) initially and they said, ‘We’ll give you ($500,000) and you have to get the rest on your own if you want it.’ So I would recommend that we go $13,500 out of fund balance with the understanding that if we don’t need it, it will just roll back into our fund balance.”

Simon also suggested waiting until the project is wrapping up to see if there is need for additional funds. Gary Ubben, BOE vice chairman, said the contractor would want the BOE to have the money on hand before agreeing to additional work.

The BOE will vote on whether to approve the funds Thursday during its regular meeting.