Proactive maintenance work — finding potential failures before a problem exists — is the focus of the school district’s proposed 2014-2015 facilities budget, up 1.43% from 2013-2014.
But there’s also talk of a gas line to save energy.
The facilities and maintenance operations budget — $7,717,881 — is 9% of the district’s proposed $85,635,143, but doesn’t includes hot-button, capital improvement projects such as the proposed three-mile natural gas line that would run down Ridgebury Road from Danbury to the high school’s campus.
“Having gas up at that campus would bring tremendous long-term savings and allow us to run the campus much more efficiently,” said Joe Morits, the district’s facilities manager. “We’re estimating $130,000 in savings in year one with an estimated payback of 11.6 years.”
Mr. Morits, who presented his budget to the Board of Education on Jan. 22, estimated the pipeline would cost $3 million.
Additional capital improvement costs would include a $1.2-million, 200 kW turbine at the high school and a $300,000 50 kW turbine at Scotts Ridge.
The capital improvement fund, which is separate from the facilities budget, is a proposed $1,232,000 in 2014-2015.
RHS spends $638,690 a year on electricity — it uses a lot of electric heating — and $174,825 on fuel oil. Scotts Ridge spends $168,735 on electricity and $80,325 on fuel oil.
Similar to previous discussions about the gas line, board members were skeptical that the town would participate in funding the project.
Mr. Morits warned the board that something had to be done to cut energy costs at the campus.
“The more proactive we are, the more time there is to evaluate,” he said.
Mr. Morits cited several examples from the past year, including the replacement of the fire pump at the high school in May and, more recently, the sprinkler system failure at the high school on Jan. 4.
“Tracing back from last February to now, there’s been a lot of critical failures and we’re working slowly to balance those out,” he said.
Salaries and energy costs make up almost 71.9% of the budget, but a 12.3% increase in work orders — totaling in 978 completed repair requests from last February to now, has Mr. Morits and his staff looking to make an “investment in improvement and reliability.”
Operating budget projects, proposed at $104,000 for 2014-2015, include: repairing the chimney cap at Farmingville, installing a 25 kW generator at East Ridge, and installing a new fire pump control system at the high school.
While the elementary and middle schools will be seeing an increase — $66,411 and $121,553, respectively — the high school will have a $36,845 reduction in facilities and maintenance.
Mr. Morits called for finding a balance between the daily and routine maintenance work that needs to be done and the long-term operational maintenance of the district’s nine buildings.
In addition to the proposed gas line, some of the capital improvement projects for 2014-2015 include: additional security upgrades, water well infrastructure improvement at Branchville and Farmingville, and the continued implementation of “learning commons model” for both middle school’s libraries.