Peñasco commissions school infrastructure plan
Elementary school still short on heat after windstorm
Portions of Peñasco Elementary School have been without heat since December, when a severe windstorm led Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to declare a state of emergency in Taos County. But a new heating, ventilation and cooling system — to be installed as part of a campus-wide capital improvements “roadmap” commissioned by the district — won’t generate heat until spring 2023.
“We have one section of the elementary that is without [heat] due to a boiler that was damaged during the power outage,” Peñasco Superintendent Melissa Sandoval told the Taos News Tuesday night, after the independent district’s board of education met for its regular meeting. “As you’ve heard tonight, we have several empty classes. We have reassigned classes to areas with heat, so there are no students in an area where heat is lacking.”
Meanwhile, the Peñasco Independent School District Board of Education has ordered the preliminary study for a comprehensive Facilities Master Plan that will be a first for the rural district. The document will help the district identify and secure funding for much-needed infrastructure improvements, including system-wide HVAC replacement. According to one member of the district’s board of education, the furnaces on campus are an average of 20-25 years old.
The final master plan will take time to finalize, according to Douglas Patterson, president of Living Designs Group Architects, which has also offered to serve as the district’s project manager once the plan’s priorities are identified. He said the preliminary study his firm is currently working on won’t be completed until mid- to late-summer, and a final Facilities Master Plan won’t be ready until several months after that. At its meeting Tuesday night (March 22), the Board of Education authorized a $28,900 contract for the preliminary study, getting the ball rolling on what will be a campus-wide assessment of campus utilities, including heating and cooling, ventilation, building efficiency, mechanical systems, and a review of the way the district currently uses its buildings.
“There’s really such a hodgepodge of different systems, and all of these buildings have been a conglomerate of additions over time, that there’s probably never ever been one comprehensive look at the mechanical systems for the district,” Patterson said. “It opens up a lot of possibilities.”
The final facilities master plan document “will be an assessment of [all] your existing systems,” Patterson continued. “It’ll be an assessment of all the utilities that feed the campus. And it will be two recommendations for the replacement of those systems, as well as a proposed cost-analysis of what those systems will cost to install.”
The analysis the architecture firm has completed so far reveals an aging campus that requires a lot of maintenance, has underused building space and costs the district a small fortune in monthly utility payments. That high cost is due in part to the entire campus — and Peñasco generally — relying on propane for heat.
Patterson also informed the school board that the recentlyannounced plan to extend natural gas service from Dixon to Peñasco changes things considerably. During the last legislative session, $14.5 million in capital outlay funding was allocated for the Dixon-Peñasco gas line “loop.” Patterson’s comments came as a revelation to several school board members, who emitted sounds of joy.
“Can you expand on that?” one board member asked.
The prospect of transitioning away from propane “significantly changes the capacities of the systems that we’re evaluating and puts you in a much better position,” Patterson said, adding that his company will have to revise it’s analysis to include an option to replace the propane system with natural gas.
Assuming the district can secure the funding it will need for various projects, work likely won’t begin until “this time next year” at the earliest, Patterson said.
That’s longer than Sandoval had expected it to take to replace the broken boiler. Although the governor’s emergency declaration authorized up to $750,000 in aid to Taos County in the wake of the windstorm, Sandoval said the she had not yet requested help from the state.
“We were hoping to hold off until we could get the new system in place, but [now] we will have to reassess our situation,” she told the Taos News. “Replacement of a boiler is quoted at $25,000-plus, and I’d prefer to reserve our funds for the new system.”
District 42 state Rep. Kristina Ortez told the Taos News that the emergency funding related to the windstorm is administered by the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Ortez said she’s been in discussions with other officials about the need for a “crisis fund,” which communities could rely on during emergencies.
“There’s a need for these kinds of programs,” she said, adding that there’s no shortage of dollars available right now. The question, Ortez said, is “how to disburse funds out to rural communities that may lack capacity to apply for grants, and how to get as much out as possible and as fast as possible.”
‘There’s really such a hodgepodge of different systems, and all of these buildings have been a conglomerate of additions over time, that there’s probably never, ever been one comprehensive look at the mechanical systems for the district. It opens up a lot of possibilities.’
DOUGLAS PATTERSON
President of Living Designs Group Architects