BRICK – As the director of facilities for the school district, William Kolibas Jr. always has a list of maintenance projects that vary in degrees of urgency and cost.
With a total of 17 buildings to maintain, including all 13 schools, items get crossed off as they’re completed, only to have more added. There are currently 17 projects underway in the district.
School principals and administrators bring building problems to the attention of Kolibas, who along with Business Administrator James Edwards evaluates the problem before bringing them before the Facilities Committee.
The committee includes Kolibas, Edwards, the superintendent of schools, Director of Planning Research and Evaluation Susan McNamara, Board of Education President Stephanie Wohlrab and Board members Maria Foster and Nicole Siebert.
Many of the projects started the day after school ended, including a partial roof replacement over a large section of Brick High School.
The roof is divided into 16 sections. Section 4, which includes hallways, classrooms, offices, a locker room and parts of the gym surrounding the auditorium, is in the process of having the stone removed, demolition of the underlying roof, and re-insulation and roof replacement. The price tag for the long-needed project is $984,150, Kolibas said.
Another big capital project underway is construction on the parking lot at Emma Havens Young Elementary School. During phase 1, the main parking lot will be reconfigured for student safety and bus drop-off, which includes resurfacing, mill and base repair, new curbs, sidewalks, lighting and landscaping.
As part of the contract, the work must be substantially completed by August 15 in time for the new school year. The cost of phase 1 is $868,631.
Phase 2, scheduled for next year, is a similar project planned for the adjacent Drum Point Elementary School parking lot, which has been designed, but construction cost is included in next year’s budget.
The Lake Riviera Middle School lintel project has become necessary as structural steel horizontal beams above each window have started to rust as evidenced by rust-colored stains on interior walls.
“We don’t know how or why they’re rusting, but we have to repair them before their integrity is affected,” Kolibas said. As part of the repair, the EIFS (stucco) siding on about half the school has to be removed to get to the lintels. The cost for this project is $849,000.
HVAC systems for the auditorium at Brick High School and Vets Elementary School total $632,500, and a partial roof replacement at Veterans Middle School will cost $172,424.
Veterans Elementary School is currently undergoing an energy efficiency upgrade that includes new lights, low flow water faucets and new boilers, which are currently being removed.
The boilers contain asbestos material, so the building is shut down for 10 days, while a decontamination unit is not allowing anyone in the building as the air quality is monitored before, during and after the boiler removal. Afterwards, high-efficiency models will be installed, Kolibas said.
In fact, all district buildings had an energy audit through ESIP (Energy Savings Improvement Plan) and all equipment will be updated to energy-efficient equipment over the next 24 months. The savings will pay for the new equipment, he said.
The second part of going “green” is managing those systems through Cenergistics, a nationwide company that uses computer models to monitor energy costs and help to reduce usage even further in the district.
Other projects included in the capital budget include upgrading a bathroom at Lake Riviera to make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act ($25,000); the grandstands at Brick Memorial High School are in the process of being refurbished ($94,000); and a replacement project for interior and exterior doors continues at both high schools and Veterans Memorial Middle School ($250,000).
According to Assistant Business Administrator for the school district, Maria Roberts, CPA, the capital outlay is budgeted for the fiscal year July to June, which is different from the capital projects fund, which is used for bond referendum projects or projects that are partially state funded, which can carry over multiple years.
Currently, all the capital items fall under capital outlay, Roberts wrote in an email after the Board of Education meeting.
The total capital outlay budget for school year 2018-2019 is $2,557,526, and the total capital outlay budget for school year 2019-2020 is $4,662,343, Roberts wrote.
