Medical Lake Middle School is being considered as a site for a permanent storage facility for the district at some point in the near future
MEDICAL LAKE - As students depart for their summer break and downtime, the maintenance department in the Medical Lake School District gears up for one of its busiest times of the year.
"It'll be a fast 45-day whirlwind between the end of school and the beginning of school," Chad Moss, the district's finance director who is the project liaison, said in a report at the May 25 school board meeting.
As usual the punch-list for summer is varied with both outdoor and inside projects. Digging into the details can be eye-opening, especially for Moss who spends most of his year number crunching the district's $26 million operational budget.
Take parking lots as an example, all of which need some level of either repair of replacement.
"I had no idea how much asphalt full repair it took," Moss said." "Like our district office, it was like $95,000, just for our district office.
The current plan calls for a top-coat and other repairs to the middle school parking lot, but other school lots may require more major fixes, which had Superintendent Tim Ames suggesting a pause.
Doing a resurface on those "is astronomical" it might be better to wait and see which ones need to be replaced and include it in the next bond request. "It'd be putting good money at a problem that's just gonna' be a problem in two or three years," he said.
Those more immediate and doable projects include those at the high school where a roofing project that began last year will continue. Bid requests were expected to go out the first week in June.
Tennis courts at the high school are slated for repair of cracks in the concrete. Michael Anderson Elementary will have new sinks installed come September and new playground equipment is coming to Hallett.
Hallett will also be seeing a former art room being remodeled for future use as a classroom and the high school's weight room is on the move.
Moss and head of maintenance, Gary Hartman, are also planning for the future with the hopes of building a permanent storage facility, perhaps on middle school property. With COVID-19 forcing reduces classroom capacity the district was faced with the problem of where to store unused desks.
Paul Delaney is a retired Free Press Publishing reporter and can be reached at pauldelaney53@comcast.net.
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