Colfax school district referendum: what is included in $2.2 million of infrastructure?

By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX  —  Part of the $7.2 million referendum that will be on the ballot for residents in the Colfax school district on November 8 is $2.2 million for infrastructure.

But what does that mean — infrastructure?

Infrastructure is defined as the basic facilities or components needed to operate a particular facility or enterprise.

Infrastructure, said Bill Yingst, Colfax school district administrator, are those components you cannot see but if you do not have them up-to-date and well-maintained, the school buildings do not operate very well.

Some of the items on the infrastructure list came from the energy efficiency project from three years ago, Yingst said.

The Colfax Board of Education selected the projects that they thought the school district could afford at that time, “but the needs don’t go away,” he said.

The school district had a zero mill rate impact at the time the energy efficiency projects were completed, Yingst noted.

Infrastructure items on the energy efficiency list include new heating and ventilation equipment for the middle school and high school with new digital controls; re-piping the boiler room hot water supply system; and three energy recovery ventilators to pre-treat fresh air.

Other items include a fire alarm panel upgrade; security system upgrade including roll down doors; domestic water conservation updates; exterior building repairs; and additional technology updates.

The list also includes replacing three rubberized roofs; replace carpeting in 20 classrooms (average age of 16 years); hall locker replacement; and parking lot maintenance.

“This is the internal stuff that’s not very fun. People don’t really walk through your boiler room. The big air handlers. They are high dollar replacement items,” Yingst said.

“We are talking about going from pneumatic controls to digital controls and to be computerized. The way they are now, they are almost considered to be stand alone systems (among the elementary, middle and high school). You are dealing with a wrench to try to set those old pneumatic controls. This way, you would be dealing with one computer. You can see the whole system and see what is working and what is not working,” he said.

The problem with the Colfax school building is that there is a 1954-55 section, a 1977 section, a 1963 section, and a 1996 section, Yingst said, and they were built as separate heating plants.

The two big air handlers that are above the balcony in the gymnasium have 1977 stamped right on them, he noted.

“They are 39 years old. I don’t know how much longer we can expect them to last. We have maintained them. And knock on wood, they haven’t died on us yet. But they could stop anytime. You don’t have any choice when they go. You have to replace them. The same with boilers. When they go, and if they are $50,000 each, and that does not include not installation, but you have to have them,” Yingst said.

Proprietary

Many of the components of the heating and ventilation system are “proprietary” which means they are unique to a particular company and are not standard across the industry.

“If you work with Trane or another company, all of their (components) are proprietary. If you installed a Trane 20 years ago, and 40 years ago you had some other company’s proprietary parts there — well, they don’t all talk to each other. So then you’re trying to tie systems together. It’s not just the boiler, because then you’ve got the proprietary pieces, the controls that you have to get tied together. Otherwise you have a web of a mess,” Yingst said.

“And then it’s very hard to control. This area is cold and this area isn’t. And you’re down there tweaking separate systems. With a digital control you can adjust and make it so that it is a consistent heat,” he said.

The school district’s maintenance people are all extremely good at what they do but there is only so much they can do with the old and outdated heating and ventilation system, Yingst said.

A new heating and ventilation system that covers all of the different sections of the building and ties them together will be much more energy efficient, he said.

Fire alarm

The fire alarm system is tied into the security system update that would be part of the projects covered by the $2.2 million in infrastructure for the referendum.

“We’ve got one project in the referendum we call safety and security … (that is) tied it in with the drop roll down doors,” Yingst said.

The school building has several areas where a drop-down door can prevent access to the rest of the building.

When there is a basketball game, for example, the drop-down doors can keep people in the gymnasium area of the building and prevent access to the halls in the other parts of the building.

“The problem is, you can’t make (the drop down doors) lockable unless the fire system is tied into it. You could pull it down and lock it, but then people can’t get out of the building (if there’s a fire). It’s a fire safety code issue,” Yingst said.

The drop-down doors must be tied “to the fire alarm, and if those are down, they go up automatically if there’s a fire alarm. It has to be automated,” he said.

The drop-down doors are essential for safety and security in the school building. If there was an intruder who meant do harm to students and staff, the drop-down doors could keep that person in a certain section of the building until law enforcement arrived.

“If you had a safety issue, and you wanted to cordon off certain sections, you could drop those, and you could keep someone who was here to do harm at bay and not let them get into the rest of the building at certain intersections,” Yingst said.

Water conservation

In recent years, more and more high capacity wells have been put on-line for irrigating farm fields, for operating the large dairies and to process sand excavated from sand mines.

Part of the $2.2 million in infrastructure updates that would be part of the November 8 referendum question would deal with water conservation.

“We are talking about replacing high flow toilets at 3.5 gallons per flush with high efficiency that is down to 1.28 (gallons per flush),” Yingst said.

“You would cut your water usage down to about half. You have just about thousand people in here, students and staff, and that is a lot of water. We pay quite a bit for water every quarter. And that would be a savings for the taxpayer,” Yingst said.

If a thousand people flush a toilet once per day, it would amount to a savings of 2,200 gallons per day, or 44,000 gallons per month or 132,000 gallons per quarter — or about 400,000 gallons for the nine-month school year.

At two flushes per day per person, that amounts to 264,000 gallons per quarter of water saved — or about 800,000 gallons per school year.

Lockers

Anyone who graduated from high school in at least the last 50 years remembers having a locker.

Depending on when you graduated, those lockers were newer or older, better or worse.

If your locker was an older model and gave you problems getting it open, the delays and difficulties could put a real dent in your school day.

The lockers at Colfax Middle School and Colfax High School are part of the $2.2 million infrastructure portion of the $7.2 million referendum.

“Lockers are very expensive. These lockers are relatively old and the locking mechanisms keep wearing out,” Yingst said.

The problem is, “they don’t make those anymore. So we’re trying to get used parts to fix them,” he said.

Replacing the lockers will make the school day run more smoothly for both students and staff.

Parking lot

No matter whether you are talking about a parking lot, a street or a road — asphalt is expensive.

Part of the $2.2 million infrastructure portion of the referendum is for the parking lots at Colfax High School/Middle School and Colfax Elementary.

Paving a mile of road costs around $100,000, and maintaining the asphalt pays off in the long run.

“Parking lot maintenance is ongoing. If you don’t maintain the parking lot, then it becomes very expensive to replace it,” Yingst said.

Additional updates

Other updates that would be included in the infrastructure portion of the referendum would be technology updates that would help the school district meet new testing standards.

Exterior building repairs would be part of the infrastructure portion as well.

During the energy efficiency project three years ago, the interior of the school building was examined and sealed up where necessary.

This part of the project would examine the exterior of the building to find places where water could seep into the building through failed sealants, windows or roof flashings, according to information provided to the school board at the time of the previous energy efficiency project.

Water infiltration can damage interior and exterior portions of the building and can eventually cause structural damage.

Other projects

Other projects in the $7.2 million referendum include replacing temporary classrooms that were meant to be used for less than a decade but have now been in use for 30 years.

The temporary classrooms would be replaced with a 7,000 square-foot addition on the north side of the elementary school.

The $1.4 million for the new classrooms includes demolition of the temporary classrooms.

In addition, the referendum amount includes $750,000 for a bus maintenance building (a maintenance garage and not the “bus barn” where the buses are parked); $1.2 million for technical education/STEM (improvement and expansion of existing tech ed areas including equipment and technology upgrades); $650,000 to improve safety and security (relocate the existing high school office to the east side of the building, card access, cameras).

The referendum amount also includes $600,000 to purchase six new liquid propane buses to begin the replacement cycle. Colfax runs 18 buses, so replacing one per year means that each bus must last 18 years.

The last item included in the referendum amount will be $400,000 to pay off the Wisconsin Retirement System “unfunded liability.”

The school district has been working on paying off the liability to the Wisconsin Retirement System for the last 27 years, since 1989.

The school district is paying $60,000 per year, and at the current pay rate, the unfunded liability would be paid off in 2029.

If the school district continues to make payments of $60,000 per year for the next 13 years, the total would amount to $780,000 — or nearly twice the amount the Board of Education is asking for in the referendum question.

More info

The Colfax Messenger plans to publish an article in the October 26 edition that takes a closer look at the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math portion of the referendum.

Anyone who wishes to tour the school buildings to see what needs to be replaced or updated is welcome, Yingst said.

If you would like to set up a tour, contact Superintendent Bill Yingst at 715-962-3773 or by e-mail at wyingst@colfax.k12.wi.us.

Two informational meetings also are scheduled on October 26 and November 3 at 7 p.m. at the Colfax High School library.