PEEKSKILL, N.Y. -- The city school district will be expected to help pay for over $19 million in renovations to the Northern Westchester-Putnam BOCES campuses.
BOCES Assistant Superintendent John McCarthy explained to school board and district officials at Tuesday night's board meeting that there are several urgent capital projects that BOCES officials need to pay for, including $5 million to replace foam roofing that contains asbestos at the main campus and $8.7 million to replace the more than 40-year-old HVAC systems on the main campus.
The other costs would go towards updating safety features on the Pines Bridge/Walden campus therapeutic pool used to treat mentally and physically handicapped students to bring it up to state code and to repair the alarm and PA systems at another campus.
Peekskill School Board President Joseph Urbanowicz said the district's projected contribution would be $620,264, and that the first payment would be due in 2012.
McCarthy told trustees he knew it was a difficult time for school districts in the area but said the projects were necessary.
"If there was a worse time to come to you and the other 17 districts to say we have these capital needs, I haven't seen that time in the past 30 years," McCarthy said.
The amount of capital project work being done on the BOCES campuses has outpaced the accumulation of capital funds, he said.
BOCES will be seeking $18 million to help pay for the renovations from its 18 participating school districts, including Peekskill. However, the district may pay less than some larger wealthier districts since BOCES uses two factors to determine how much is asked of each district -- property wealth and enrollment size of the district. Both are weighed equally. State aid is also available to districts that participate in BOCES.
The projects will be carried out over the next three years and would likely require at least two borrowings by the district, according to McCarthy: one in July 2012 and one in July 2013.
The renovation projects will require an adoption by a joint resolution of all 18 participating district school boards.
Urbanowicz said the board has asked BOCES officials to provide more information about the projects, some of which he said he believes could be done in a less expensive manner than planned.
"We asked them to look into a few things," he said.
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