The Valley Central Board of Education will continue to weigh its options regarding a potential public referendum on making site improvements at the entrance of the High School-Middle School complex after the CSArch architectural firm presented the council with four alternative plans at its Nov. 13 meeting.

The four different options, which each contain varying degrees of infrastructure work throughout the district, range in price from $7.8 million up to $21.9 million. Going forward, the board can pick and choose which items from each option they might be comfortable presenting to the public in a package, or the group could decline to approve a bond proposal at all.

During Tuesday’s board session, Thomas Ritzenthaler of CSArch, a company which the district has hired to study traffic upgrades on Route 17K as well as additional infrastructure needs in district schools, laid out four options for possible public referendums. The first option would include approximately $6 million in spending at the high school complex in order to improve the traffic flow at the site for school buses and student drop-offs, as well as funding for a relocated parking lot. That sum would also include $823,372 for pool dehumidification at the school, as well as $255,373 for the installation of air conditioning in the middle school cafeteria and $241,460 for AC in the high school cafeteria. The first option would also include $290,804 in building improvements at Walden Elementary and $689,774 in building improvements at Montgomery Elementary for a total of $7,880,711 in overall spending.

Board of Education President Melvin Wesenberg said the council would be deliberate in studying multiple options going forward and would have to be convinced that a referendum is truly needed before presenting one to the public. “To get to that point, we’d need to see need that is overwhelmingly required,” he explained. “The pool seems to fit that, because it seems there are big issues there. It’s not our money and not our money to spend, it has to be good for the taxpayers and make them say ‘This district has to run this way, it can’t run without doing this.’ If it’s not to that level, then we have to wait because we’re not made of money.”

The second bond option presented by CSArch would include all of the items in the first option, as well as $2,934,007 for work on the high school’s east parking lot, $732,446 for upgrades to the high school auditorium and funding for cafeteria air conditioning for Berea, Walden, Montgomery and East Coldenham elementaries for a total of $12,916,341. A third option with a total of $19,398,679 in possible funding would also include $500,254 in playground work at Walden, $1,239,240 in upgrades to the east parking lot at Montgomery and gymnasium air conditioning for every elementary school. The fourth option totals $21,972,372 in spending and includes $950,059 for infrastructure work on the Montgomery west parking lot and play area.

The third and fourth options would also feature $700,008 in funding for a concession stand near the high school football field, as well as a new scoreboard and restroom facilities near the field. “We don’t have any bathrooms there right now outside, we just have Port-o-Potties,” Valley Central Superintendent John Xanthis said. “So we don’t have to do a concession stand if the board doesn’t want to, but we have to do something there at some point.”

When the outside firm studied the district’s long-term infrastructure needs, they identified $99 million in potential upgrades that could be made in the long run. In the short term, the administration is focused on fixing the traffic problems on Route 17K outside the high school site.

“I think we have to make one or two decisions, because there’s urgency and we want to do something in front of the high school,” Xanthis said. “We have two choices – they can look at the $99 million and say ‘We want to do all of these things but let’s get this $6 million option out of the way and we’ll include the pool dehumidifier and the electric work in the high school auditorium.’ Then if we got that going and could run with that, the second thing would be to start the discussion on what the scope of what is the next thing you want to pursue down the line. Hopefully a year from now. The longer you wait, there’s escalation costs. I thought that (Trustee) Brad Conklin had a great sense that maybe we want to start small and then continue, because it might be harder to go out for $21-25 million and then come back in three years and say ‘Now we really want to do some of the educational things.’ So this might be a better way.”

During the meeting, Conklin expressed his hope that the board could address infrastructure needs at Walden Elementary, while Trustee Sheila Schwartz said that any package should include more educational spending, such as new science labs. Wesenberg said the board would examine every option before they ever would approve a public referendum. “Beyond that,” he said, “including what can we do to cut in other places so that maybe we don’t have to go out (with a referendum). I’d like to use some of our fund balance, but that’s an issue for the board to decide. That’s an idea we have that we could look at.”

The CSArch proposal accounts for the installation of two traffic lights on Route 17K outside of the school complex, but only the state Department of Transportation can ultimately complete that task. The Route 17K light project now has a pin number at DOT, but the state agency alone will set the time frame on that work. “Everything has to be DOT,” Xanthis said. “At the end of the day, they’re going to decide what it’s going to look like on 17K. Originally we thought we had some discretion out there, but this is all on them. I also believe, as Tom (Ritzenthaler) said, that it would be advantageous for us to get our work done before they come. You never know with the DOT. Now that it’s in the queue, they could show up in a year and be ready to go. It would be nice to do what we need to do inside there.”

The CSArch presentation included a theoretical timeline for a public referendum that would see a public vote occur in April, with construction taking place between April and November of 2020, but that timeline will not happen in reality, as board approval of a referendum is not imminent.