District makes plans for repairs

Co-Authored by Bill Zopf, Board President & Dr. Jean Parr, Superintendent

We hope everyone in the district enjoyed their winter recess and had wonderful holiday experiences with their family and friends. In this month’s column we further discuss plans to improve and repair district buildings.

Planned Improvements to District Buildings
As mentioned in our November column, New York State has introduced the EXCEL (EXpanding our Children’s Education and Learning) program to provide additional funding for school construction projects. Beacon is classified by the state as a high need district for building aid purposes, making us eligible for funding at the rate of $778.22 per student enrolled in 2005. Our aid from the state is calculated at $2,748,000.

Unlike standard state aid for a building project which is paid to the district over a 15 to 30 year period, EXCEL aid is paid to the school district as project costs are incurred, thus reducing the amount of money which needs to be borrowed upfront and minimizing the interest the district would pay on the borrowed money.

Based on past facility studies done for the school district, needed repairs and improvements were identified which encompass most of the buildings in the district. They include things such as roof replacement, boiler replacement, to installing elevator for handicap accessiblility.

The total cost for all of these improvements is approximately $7,250,000. Although this is more than we would get in EXCEL aid, the entire project qualifies for the standard state building aid. In the case of Beacon, the state would pay roughly 62% of the eligible portion of the project and the remaining 38% minus the EXCEL aid would be paid from local taxes.

For a project costing $7,250,000 the state would give Beacon $2,700,000 of EXCEL aid and an estimated $4,495,000 in building aid. This would leave approximately $55,000 to be paid from local taxes. Since this would be paid out over a 15 year period, the yearly cost before interest payments would be just $3,666, which would be spread across all tax payers. This is a very small investment to make a large number of needed repairs and improvements and keep our facilities safe and functional.

We have hired an engineering firm to begin work on the plans. These plans need to be approved by the state before we can move forward with the actual repairs. In order to obtain the EXCEL aid and borrow the additional money to make the repairs we need the voters’ approval by a referendum. We have scheduled March 21 as the day for voting to borrow the money and obtain the EXCEL aid. Once we receive the voters' approval we can put the project out to bid, make adjustments to the list of repairs based on the bid outcome and begin the work.

More information will be available at the school board meetings and at various presentations which we will be holding prior to the vote.

If you have any suggestions for future columns you may e-mail me at bzopf.bcsd@gmail.com.