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School leaders explain projects leading up to $20 million vote
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · August 25, 2016


Drive out to West Branch High School after hours, and in the east parking lot one can still see the pink spray paint marking a rough estimate of where the proposed $20 million addition would reach.


The Board of Education and administrators led a tour of the site Aug. 11, talking both about the addition and some $322,000 in work planned in preparation for the addition.

In the third phase of the school district’s 15-year Master Facilities Plan, work consists of:

• $107,000 for excavation work, which includes possibly cutting eight to 10 feet off of the hill just north of the baseball field and moving to the east to level out the ground for a relocated softball field. This would also prepare the ground for a future concession stand and storage shed.

• $67,000 to pave a fire access road — at least 12 feet, but possibly 18 feet wide — that loops around the back of the building and the track-and-field/practice football stadium.

• $81,000 in utility work that also installs a new fire hydrant and manhole, a larger water main and related work.

• $38,000 in a variety of smaller projects, like removing pavement, traffic control and laying footing for the 20-by-30-foot concession stand and 50-by-140-foot storage shed.

Superintendent Kevin Hatfield said the board has about $1.9 million in Physical Plant and Equipment Levy (PPEL) and Secure an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE, formerly the School Infrastructure Sales and Service tax or Local Option Sales Tax). Those funds would pay for these Phase 3 projects.

The board plans to decide at its Sept. 12 meeting whether to put the work out for bids.

Hatfield and board member Mike Owen pointed out that, even if voters do not immediately approve funding for the addition, this work will still serve its purpose.

Mayor Roger Laughlin participated in the tour, noting that moving the softball field “is a big point of contention.” The school board, following the plan, would move the softball field to make way for a new parking lot entrance that lines up with a future road into the Meadows subdivision.

Owen noted that the softball field is just one part of a larger plan.

“We’re competing for people,” Owen said, meaning drawing more families to town. “We have to offer better than we do now.”

Hatfield said he heard some residents suggesting that there is not enough room in the east yard of WBHS for the softball field, but walked the dozen or so visitors over to that part of the property, showed them small marker flags denoting the field, and said there is plenty of room.

The $20 million referendum, which could come to a vote in the spring, would add about $3.20 to the tax rate. However, the school district plans to wait until a $1.21 tax rate, which is paying off the geothermal HVAC project and other work, ends. With the tax rate now at $14.16 per $1,000 assessed property valuation, the tax rate would increase by a net of $1.60, and finish at about $15.76.

Industrial technology instructor Randy Robertson will lead a class to build the storage shed, and he would like to see the foundation poured before winter to get the shed built by May.

Herbert Hoover National Historic Site Superintendent Pete Swisher asked that the work not change the rate at which stormwater runoff flows toward adjacent properties. The high school’s eastern boundary bumps up against the historic site.

Board President Mike Colbert threw out a question to HBK engineer Brian Boelk, asking hypothetically where he would put Hoover Elementary if it needed a new spot. Boelk suggested placing it west of WBHS.

“But we’d need more ground,” Owen suggested.