$82K OK'd for school upkeep study

Jul. 3—Cumberland County Schools will be updating its maintenance priorities in the upcoming school year, as the Board of Education voted 5-4 to approve an $82,200 maintenance study with Upland Design Group at a June 22 meeting.

Director of Schools William Stepp explained the study would "create a long-term plan on prioritizing our maintenance schedule."

In the proposed study, the team provided by Upland Design Group would visually survey and provide a written assessment of the school district's nine elementary schools, three high schools and the county's BOE office.

The team would include Kim Chamberlin of Upland Design Group assessing architectural maintenance, with Justin Newell and Gary Loftis of Maffett Loftis Engineering assessing mechanical, plumbing and electrical maintenance.

Areas the survey and assessment would address include general deficiencies; life safety/code compliance; structural systems; mechanical systems; electrical systems; plumbing systems and site conditions.

The final assessment, which is estimated to take about 150 days to complete, would include a recommended maintenance plan with a rough preliminary cost estimate.

Chris King, 6th District representative, moved to approve the proposal.

A few board members were skeptical of the proposal.

Anita Hale, 4th District representative, asked, "Why do we need this?"

Teresa Boston, 8th District representative, responded, "We really do need to update our maintenance plan, but the maintenance plan that we came up with seven years ago, we did ourselves.

"It is not a major maintenance plan that we've created—we take care of the tile, the paint, lights, bathroom partitions," Boston continued. "This does paving. This does ceiling, flooring."

Stepp elaborated to the board, "This is an engineering perspective of maintenance functions and operations, not just cosmetic.

"That's why I would suggest that we do this. It's to take an approach where they can see the longevity of all our maintenance equipment and not just look at the cosmetic side—tile and stuff like that," he continued.

Sheri Nichols, 3rd District representative, added, "And in the long run, this may save us a lot of money."

Boston said, "Maybe, maybe not...I don't know how we could do a maintenance plan for structural. I think $82,000 is a great deal of money at this point."

Boston suggested waiting until they had a better opportunity to "see where they land" money-wise.

Shannon Stout, 9th District representative, asked Stepp if other districts have done a maintenance study similar to this, and if so, how much it cost.

Stepp said these studies can be pretty expensive, usually between $300,000 to $400,000.

Stepp continued, "There was a grant in the state of Tennessee last year that a lot of counties applied for, and they're actually doing just the whole infrastructure, strategic planning as well as operations.

"It can get very, very expensive," Stepp concluded. "This [proposal] is just using Upland and their engineers to just do our maintenance side. This is not as extensive as growth and infrastructure needs in the future."

Nicholas Davis, 5th District representative, asked what the plan would be to take care of maintenance if the board voted to not fund the study.

Boston responded that she would like to task Kim Bray, the school district's acting chief financial officer and director of human resources, to give the board a rundown of what needs to be looked at, instead of paying for a larger-scale study.

"It may or may not save us a lot of money in the long run. I haven't had experience with this. All I know is we've had our maintenance plan, which normally costs us about $1.5 million just to maintain that without any renovation," Boston explained.

"We are doing extensive maintenance on our buildings each year, and I don't know how much more we could afford to do each year," she added.

Bray gave the board an idea of what projects would be prioritized in the study.

Bray said, referring to her role in maintenance, "Day to day, I'm comfortable with, but when I look at things like aging electrical, major projects that they're going to have to assist us with...that's the sort of things I need their input from."

She continued to say these would typically be projects in excess of $500,000, such as replacing electrical systems.

Rebecca Hamby, 7th District representative, shared concerns about the frequency of large-scale studies. She asked, "Would we have to do this every year?"

Bray responded that this would not be needed every year, as Upland Design Group's recommendation would cover maintenance needed for the next five to seven years, in areas they see major deficiencies in.

Hale said, "I don't see the big need for this, because its an awful lot of money at this particular moment in time."

After discussion ended, King's motion was put to a vote, passing 5-4.

Those in favor of the motion were Stout, King, Davis, Nichols and 2nd District representative Robert Safdie. Voting against the motion were Hale, Hamby, Boston and 1st District representative Elizabeth Stull.

Upon the board's authorization, the survey work will begin in July while students are not on school grounds.