School building repairs winding down

PINE PLAINS — Work on the Pine Plains Central School District’s Seymour Smith Elementary School building should be completed soon, according to a status report given at the Aug. 18 Board of Education meeting.

Significant repairs, which started this past spring, were needed to the front, sides and top of the building, including masonry and coping work, roofing repair and stone replacement, rebuilding and re-pointing.

Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance Michael Goldbeck presented the board with a list of tasks that have already been completed as well as work that remains to be finished. Most or all of the brick work, tuck pointing and window lintel repairs are done, as well as work on the chimney, grating and the water runoff control system and catch basins.

Still left is the pre-cast work as well as a portion of the building above the gym, where metal girders were discovered showing corrosion and will need to be addressed. Paving should be completed by the time school starts, Goldbeck said.

When elementary school begins, all work will be scheduled during the second shift only, meaning that there will be no work while students are in the classroom. There will be scaffolding in place, but all exit doors will remain usable.

The only interference Goldbeck noted with school starting up again were three classrooms that will need to be relocated temporarily location for the first month of school.

Goldbeck also mentioned that there has been recent testing on dust found inside the building to ensure that it was not hazardous or continuing to enter the building.

A Bond Anticipation Note (BAN) for the project was also recently purchased at roughly $2.3 million. Competition was high, Goldbeck said, with five bidders. And while the Board of Education was hoping to get a 2-percent interest rate, the lowest bid was, in total, just under 1 percent.

“We’re really pleased with how the numbers came out on this,� he said.