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ROARING SPRING – Temperatures inside Martinsburg Elementary School’s gym/cafeteria likely will be more bearable during hot summer months, as Spring Cove School Board members voted Monday to spend an additional $270,000 to include the room in a multi-million dollar air-conditioning project.
At the board’s Monday meeting, district maintenance supervisor Mark Fluke presented two cooling options for board members to consider – both in excess of $200,000.
The first: Contracting Trane, an air-conditioning company, to install the system. District business manager Ryan Kirsch elaborated on that option in an email sent Tuesday.
“Trane will install one chiller to provide air-conditioning into the existing units for the cafeteria/gymnasium at a cost of $270,000,” Kirsch said.
Last year, Trane was hired by the district to complete a $6 million-plus air-conditioning project in order to provide cooling for two area schools.
The project included new windows, doors, lighting and ceiling tiles, as well as a new rooftop heating and air-conditioning system for Central High School, district officials said previously.
Also, the project called for air conditioning to be installed on Martinsburg Elementary School’s second floor.
At an October meeting, school board members took issue with the specifics of that project, explaining they believed it included both floors of the elementary school.
Officials said the misunderstanding stemmed from a communication breakdown, with Trane basing its prices on a previous school board’s request, which only included air conditioning to the second floor.
This is a problem due
to the large, first-floor gym/cafeteria’s tendency to become uncomfortably hot during summer months, board members said.
At Monday’s meeting, Fluke said area engineering firm Stiffler McGraw also offered a proposal to cool the room.
“The second proposal from Stiffler McGraw included design for the system to be two independent, exterior rooftop HVAC units,” Kirsch said in his Tuesday email
“The approximate project related costs were in the $246,000-to-$295,000 range,” Kirsch continued. “However, these costs did not
include professional engineering and design services.”
Presenting both options to the board, Fluke recommended the Trane proposal.
“It’s going to be more economical, cheaper to run,” Fluke said, adding that the Trane rooftop unit will be easier to tie into the already existing Trane system.
In a split vote, board members voted to accept the Trane proposal, with board members James Smith and Mary Smith dissenting.
After the meeting, James Smith said he would have liked more time to review the proposals and also expressed disgust with the original misunderstanding.
“We got a lot of this information at the last minute,” he said. “We should have had this stuff up front.”
Mary Smith said she, too, believes the elementary school’s first floor should have been covered in the original deal.
“It was an unfortunate situation with the whole project,” she said.
The $270,000 will be paid from the district’s capital projects account, according to the meeting’s agenda.
Kirsch said the remaining first-floor classrooms are to be cooled with individual cooling units.
Mirror Staff Writer Sean Sauro is at 946-7535.