The Mineola Board of Education on Thursday approved the hiring of a new construction company for the Meadow Drive School library expansion project, which has been delayed for more than three months after the originally approved contractor dropped the job in a dispute with the district.
Mineola Superintendent of Schools Michael Nagler announced at the meeting that construction of a new bus lane at the Jackson Avenue School had also been delayed.
Nagler said he was “disappointed” by both delays. Both projects were scheduled to be completed by now.
The school board voted unanimously to award Web Construction Corp. a $939,000 contract for work on the Meadow Drive library project. The company, Nagler said, had submitted the second lowest bid on the project.
The originally approved contactor, J-Cole Construction, decided to drop the project just before its September start date over a dispute concerning construction requirements for the roof of the new wing that will house a library, Nagler said.
“The day before the project was to start, (J-Cole) rescinded the bid and said there was a problem with the roof spec,” Nagler said. “Obviously this project is going to start later than we hoped for.”
The projected was delayed earlier when the initial bids for the roof and interior work – including electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems – exceeded what the board had budgeted, and the work was rebid.
Nagler advised the board against taking legal action against J-Cole, but supported board Trustee Artie Barnett’s suggestion that the board bar that company from submitting bids on future capital construction projects.
The Meadow Drive library expansion is related to the school district’s reconfiguration plan, with the Meadow Drive and Hampton Streets School now housing students in grades K through 2.
Nagler said construction of the Jackson Avenue bus lane by Westbury-based Stasi Brothers was apparently delayed when Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent nor’easter delayed work scheduled before the Mineola project.
The project calls for the creation of a bus lane on Saville Road on the west side of the school so students do not have to cross Jackson Avenue to board buses at dismissal time. School officials said they wanted to work done before any significant winter snowfalls that could make crossing the street more dangerous.
Nagler said the work with now be done in two phases, with initial construction and resurfacing to be completed in two or three weeks. A so-called “binder” surface coat will be put down, with the final asphalt surface to be applied in the spring. The bus lane will accommodate four buses and enable students to exit from the west side of the school without crossing any streets.
The school board and an independent committee of school district residents had reviewed more than one dozen prospective alternatives for the Jackson Avenue School bus lane or loop over the past several months.
Nagler also recommended the board designate the Jackson Avenue and Meadow Drive schools as the only polling places in the school district for future elections to save costs. The move would reduce the number of polling places from four locations. Last May, the Hampton Street School and the Williston Park American Legion Hall were also used as polling places.
Last year’s school district election cost the district $4,015, a slight reduction from the $4,567 spent in 2011. Costs included $1,200 for rental of lever voting machines each year, along with $1,200 for transporting the machines to the four locations and paying poll watchers $10 per hour for the day.
“Machines will eventually become a problem,” said Nagler, who noted the district could be required to start using more expensive electronic scanning machines in 2015.
A bill extending the use of lever machines for local municipal and school board elections for two years keeps those machines in use through the end of 2014. For the 2013 election, Nagler said, rising costs of using the lever machines would push the cost of maintaining four voting locations to $6,715. He said cutting the polling stations to two locations would provide an estimated savings of $1,600.
He suggested that Williston Park, Albertson and Roslyn Heights residents could vote at Meadow Drive, while Mineola and Garden City Park residents could vote at Jackson Avenue.
In addition to the increased expense of the electronic machines in 2015, the school district would be obliged to purchase paper ballots at 50 cents apiece for each prospective voter in the district. Nagler put that number at 19,000 voters, although he pointed out that approximately 2,500 voters turn out for the school board elections.
Barnett said he estimated the total eligible voters in the district at 15,000, but said the district had to provide 110 percent of the paper ballots needed. He said if the district had to purchase 16,500 ballots, it would wind up throwing away $7,000 worth of ballots required by the state.
In other developments:
• The Mineola School District won a state efficiency grant of $213,000 from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, Nagler said. He said Mineola was one of only 16 school districts statewide to win an efficiency grant, which it will continue to receive in each of the next three years if it maintains its current cost-savings practices. The grants cannot be applied to capital projects or salaries. He said the district could purchase iPads to sustain the pilot program it began two years ago or apply the funds to an academically gifted program for summer school students.
• Nagler recommended the school board consider amending its current academically gifted program for students in grades three through seven into three programs, adding an enrichment program for students in grades one though four and enrolling students who achieve the highest scores on assessment tests in a summer program at Long Island University’s C.W. Post campus. He also suggested eliminating the term “gifted” from the programs. But said training students to excel in different disciplines should start in earlier grades.
“If we’re serious abut Intel winners, it goes all the way back,” he said.
