School board shifts from campaigning to school planning

Town says several things need to be addressed

With the completion of the RE1J school board’s effort to get a $55 million school improvements bond passed by voters, the push to put the money to use is just getting started.

Over the course of the next several months, deals and details will have to be worked out between the different players to make the projects happen and obstacles will have to be overcome, not the least of which is selling the bond that voters approved.
According to Todd Snidow, a vice president with George K Baum and Company, the company handling the sale, that won’t happen until mid-December or early January when the markets heat up after the traditional Christmas lull. That was the plan even before the bottom of the bond market fell out.
But having money just in theory hasn’t slowed the planning process. Throughout the campaign to get the bond passed and long before, planning has been going on as if approval were a certainty—not a possibility—because finalizing one aspect sometimes hinged on finalizing another.
In Crested Butte, before the school can expand onto the town property now occupied by the Tommy V baseball field, Blythe and Company, which is managing the school expansion and renovation, has to finish the school plans to identify the space needs of the school so the appropriate amount of land can be deeded by the town.
For that to happen, the school district has to hire a surveyor to identify the exact boundary of the property.
Several other issues still have to be worked through, from access and utility easements to a traffic plan that will be used to ease the tension around the school, where 54 tickets were issued last year for speeding and another 41 were issued for failure to stop, not including all of the warnings that were given out.
“Those things have all been dealt with as far as what the town has to do. They’re mostly administrative things and not deal breakers, although the traffic plan is pretty high on the list,” says Crested Butte town manager Susan Parker.
On Tuesday, November 11, representatives of the school district met with Parker and members of the Town Council to discuss the energy efficiency standard the expansion will be built to.
Although a standard set by the non-profit Leadership in Energy Efficient Design (LEED) has been discussed, the school board has had trouble justifying the cost of that certification, which could run as high as $100,000.
“A lot of the discussion up until now has been semantics. The conveyance of the land is not tied to the [outcome of the discussion] and it was never written as such. The question is: What is the most efficient building we can build and how do we achieve it in a way that is best for the community?” says Parker.
After two and a half hours, Tuesday’s discussion concluded with an agreement between school and town officials that required the newly built addition to the Crested Butte Community School to be LEED certified.
The renovated areas of the current school will be brought up to the LEED standard, but no certification will be sought.
Beyond planning, there is little that can be done before the bonds are sold.
“Over the next two to three weeks the road map will be laid out with Blythe and Company and George K Baum to coordinate selling of the bonds, construction timelines, design meetings, etc.” says superintendent Jon Nelson.
Snidow will attend a school board work session on Monday, November 17 to discuss the sale of the bonds. Nelson says the plan still allows for the various projects throughout the district to get their start in the spring of 2009.