Task force will conduct tour of schools Monday
RHINEBECK >> The school district’s newly formed Community Facilities Task Force will tour school buildings Monday to determine what projects should get priority under a future ballot proposition.
The session is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. at Chancellor Livingston Elementary School at 48 Knollwood Road.
“We’re going to try to show some of the stuff we were talking about at the (recent) meeting,” Superintendent Joseph Phelan said. “We showed them some photographs at the first meeting, and we aren’t going to be climbing up on roofs to look at places that aren’t in such good shape,” he said. “There is enough stuff that we can see in a walk-around.”
Phelan added that the task force is expected to include up to 10 residents, but more people are able to participate if they want to take the tour.
“We will be meeting again on Oct. 4 to see where we’re at in terms of their input and whether we need to schedule some additional meetings,” he said.
“A lot of the needs are pretty cut-and-dried stuff,” Phelan said. “The roofs need work and the decision needs to be whether you replace roofs or do you put that off until they are failing.”
In the most recent building conditions report, roofs at the high school — most recently replaced in 2007 — were listed as unsatisfactory. Problems identified in the survey included “failures/splits/ cracks,” “rot/decay/corrosion,” “inadequate flashing/curbs/pitch pockets,” and “evidence of water penetration/active leaks.”
Consultants wrote that the cost to replace or reconstruct the high school roof would be $1.39 million. Roofs at Chancellor Livingston Elementary School were listed as satisfactory, but skylights were noted to be unsatisfactory
and would cost $125,000 to replace.
Phelan said task force members are expected to make recommendations by the end of October, with the board expected to consider setting a ballot proposition within the next four months.
“With time for design work and time for state Education Department review and approval, then time for bidding, the soonest we’d be
able to do any of that work would probably be in the summer of 2018,” he said, “so we don’t want to delay any more than we have to and miss another season by pushing it out to 2019.”