FACILITIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES – MAY 4, 2004

Committee Members Present:

Ann Peluso Dave Moehle John Wisniewski Eric Holm

Shari Keller Karen Pelletier Tom Eagan Dirk Francois

Ron Hutchins Lou Inzinna Tom Bried Tim Duane

Randy Lombardo Jim Rodecker Jim Hale Mike Schermerhorn

Nick Macherone Roger Harrison

The committee members toured the bus garage, including the Beukendaal building, following by Glendaal elementary school.

Randy Lombardo, chair, welcomed everyone and called the meeting to order.

A discussion of the High School tour followed.

The high school staff was commended for having to deal with the inadequacies that were observed.

Discussed expanding the front cafeteria by removing the stage.

Members were shocked at the lack of working and safe machines in the shop.

Students are learning to use equipment that is so old and outdated that they will never run into them in today’s trades. An embarrassment to teach these trades without decent equipment.

Rusting out drinking fountains appears to be a common problem throughout the district.

Tom Bried has noticed a decline in the manpower available to maintain the properties in his 20 years at the district while the district has added facilities.

Possible separate budget referendum for maintenance.

Many items we are seeing are caused by lack of maintenance and now we are forced to bond, therefore paying more in the long run.

There are currently two grounds people and five maintenance mechanics to service all the district’s facilities.

Auditorium chairs should be a priority. All about pride. This room is a focal point of the district besides the gym and certain athletic fields. Not only the students and staff see, but also the community.

The C wing entrance needs to be redesigned – storage and rest rooms.

Front entrance way – no difference between this and the side entrances. It must give a good first impression, again for pride.

A plug was made for esthetics, which leads to improved pride and discipline.

TV studio – besides a learning tool, can also keep at risk kids involved in school. Could this be another way of getting announcements out?

Rather than update the outdated PA systems, would it make better fiscal sense to install a state of the art system integrated with computer technology?

We hope the school board is continuing to correct deficiencies before any warranties expire from all contractors.

What exactly was meant by “remove the Portico”? Why remove when it has a recently installed new roof. Discussed dressing it up, such as installing a peaked, metal red roof that will catch peoples’ eyes as they drive by. It is dark under the roof in front of the front entrance way.

Could we display photographs of building conditions at budget votes to support the spending levels requested in the budget?

How about inviting the board members to one of our last meetings to stress our points.

Present our findings and recommendations to the PTAs to help get our message out.

How about using public access TV as another method of showing the conditions of the facilities?

The committee feels the wish lists we have reviewed for each building would be cut in half if he had been given the maintenance budget as recommended by the State, which is 1% of the total budget.

It was recommended to have a continuing dialog with the Board of Education when they consider recommendations from the committee.

Randy Lombardo mentioned that he was the only member of the building project committee who actually attended the board meeting when the committee’s recommendations were made. It is hoped that the members of this committee will find the time to attend the board meeting when our recommendations are presented.