New board president, old business.
In her first meeting as president of the Columbus Municipal School District Board of Trustees, Yvonne Cox considered an issue that first came before the board in 2018.
“It’s like Groundhog Day,” city engineer Kevin Stafford said as he addressed the board about a district-wide paving project first proposed in December 2018.
“If you will recall then, we talked about paving throughout the district, but mainly at the football stadium,” Stafford said. “That parking lot had deteriorated then and it’s not linear. It has deteriorated even more since, especially at the north end which is used daily. That area is, by far, the most deteriorated.”
In 2018, Stafford estimated the cost of repaving the lot would be $800,000. Monday, he said it would cost closer to $1.4 million.
“I came before about this about a year ago,” Stafford said. “At that time, it was put on hold because of cost reasons. One thing about construction, the costs rarely go down.”
Cox said the board should act quickly, either to have temporary repairs or take on the entire project.
“It’s hazardous and a safety issue for anyone who is driving through there,” she said. “This is something we knew was a problem three years ago and it’s only worse now. I just think we’ve reached a point where we have to do something.”
Board member Jason Spears said funds from the American Recovery Act that will be coming the district’s way could possibly be used to fund the project.
“I understand this is a huge commitment, but with the Recovery Act money and the infrastructure bill that’s going through Congress, we’re in a much better position than we were three years ago,” he said. “Those pools of money weren’t available then. Now we have a much clearer pathway. I think we can go ahead and move forward and reimburse ourselves with those funds.”
Superintendent Cherie Labat urged the board to wait until she could collect more information on how those new funds can be spent before committing to the project.
The board took no action and will await a more detailed report from Labat.
“We don’t want to wait until the end of the summer to get started on this,” Cox said.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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