(Lake Park)– School officials at Harris-Lake Park held their final public informational meeting Thursday evening on three options for a facilities improvement project. Superintendent Les Douma says they will now review some of the comments and tally up the numbers from a straw poll to get a better feel on what the district’s patrons want…
“That information and the comments will be shared with the board on Monday night when hopefully the board will be able to make a decision what direction to go. Do they remodel, a complete remodel of the old elementary; do they make an addition to the middle school/high school and it becomes a PK-12 setting, or do they do a partial remodel and a less expensive one if you will, to the elementary building. Those are the three options. And by the questions I’m not sure. I’d hate to guess yet where people are exactly leaning, but I’m anxious to look at the comments and their straw poll votes.”
In addition to deciding on which option to pursue, Douma says he’s hoping the board will also set the date for a bond referendum during the meeting this coming Monday…
“Here’s the thing. For a September 12th vote, if that’s the vote we take, we now have to begin to organize our community in preparation for a bond in September. That’s not that many months away, so you work backwards. September to August, August to July and July to June. You’re getting down now to the middle of May. You’ve got to be pretty well organized and going full speed. That’s just a few weeks off.”
Douma adds they have renewed confidence in the cost estimates for each option after some further work by the architect…
“They have people they can use who are used to remodel, and they get a hold of those people and there’s always a fee with that, but as a district we participated with that fee just because we wanted a more accurate count of what it’s going to cost, not just a pretty close, because you don’t want in the end be surprised by what’s going on. So that’s going to be pretty accurate now because the people that said this is what it’s going to cost, they’re probably right.”
Those figures are $15.84 million for a new addition at the Middle School/High School making it a PK-12 facility; $10.9 million for a partial remodeling of existing elementary school; and $18.5 million for a full remodeling of the existing elementary.
