Monday, August 17, 2009

09/10 Capital Budget: Schools (3/3) Renovations (1/3)

Here's the complete list of capital projects proposed under the schools' renovation budget:
New locker rooms:At tonight's meeting, Tim Slocum asked about the possibility of spending the $525,000 grant for "turf and athletics complex" (the wording is something like that) on these proposed new locker rooms. There was no clear answer. And frankly, barring a significant change in the composition of the Council, I doubt we would ever get an answer.

District-wide repaving:CHS heating retrofit:You may recall this led to some heated discussions during last year's capital budget. And that was a result of a promise made two years ago to consider financing this project with a performance-based contract. (I wrote a brief history of that promise. It began with that promise and continued thru this month. You can see it here.) Tonight, Councilman Altieri assured me that as this project proceeds he will ensure that PC is considered. I take Councilman Altieri at his word. As well, many BOE members were present tonight and they didn't voice any opposition to considering PC as a serious option.

Tim White

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

we need a district wide energy audit and a comprehensive plan to retrofit the HVAC systam of all the schools.

And we need to set priorities as to which schools will yield the most immediate savings. Doing this district wide might also gain economies of scale by attracting larger firms to bid the job, and phase it over years

Anonymous said...

Are they looking to relocate the locker rooms in another part of the school or building a freestanding one over by the football field?
Lets hope they can use the Turf Funds for that.
I would demand an answer from someone if you can use these funds or not. If not, give it back!

Anonymous said...

"with the rising cost of electricity the need to change the electric heating system at CHS is a priority energy savings issue"

This is one amazing statement and appearing in the town budget it must have been viewed and reviewed by town management time and again. One just has to marvel over this statement unless one has lived a very sheltered life and is oblivious to reality.

Imagine, even the CT state government and its UCONN medical school in Farmington actually took legal action against the electric utility. The medical school had been promised electricity and electric heat and cooling too cheap to meter during the construction phase. However, when the school became operational utility rates were jacked up time and again.

Their issues were settled a while ago, like sometime around 1984! Amazingly Cheshire Town Government has only now figured out that an electric high school heating system just might be a bit pricey. Calling it a priority energy savings issue seems to miss the point as well. It should be called what it would generate - - - significantly lower annual building heating expenses.

Speaking of priorities, clearly municipal employees, elected, and appointed officials have failed miserably at making this expensive and wasteful issue a priority which would offer relief to town tax payers. November can't come soon enough.