After the Columbus Municipal School District filed an appeal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for using the insurance estimate as a basis, FEMA is finally sending a site inspector to Hunt ro review damages.
CMSD was relying on FEMA to send roughly $9.8 million, but instead FEMA offered $1.6 million to the district without going through Hunt and only observing the damage from the outside. However, a site inspector should be on the ground in roughly two weeks, according to architect Taylor Guild III.
Guild updated the CMSD board of trustees at Monday night’s special-call meeting to discuss Hunt and other capital improvements. Over the last week, representatives from CMSD and architect firm Eley Guild Hardy Architects sat on a conference call with FEMA to discuss funding. Guild said FEMA has “done a complete 180.”
“The good news is that we had another conference call on Friday, … and FEMA’s attitude is completely different,” Guild said. “They want to do anything to help us. Basically they said, ‘We want to say yes.’ They want to help us.”
However, business manager Holly Rogers said it took some convincing by Guild to get FEMA to begin to cooperate with sending someone to review the inside of the facility and its damages.
“It took a bit of finagling, and he had to ask about three times to send a site inspector,” Rogers said. “The first two times they said they didn’t have the resources, and finally they said they would send someone. It’s even in their report that the reason they didn’t go inside the building to make educated estimates toward the repair is because the building was already moldy when they came out. There were notes as to reasons why they didn’t enter the facility to make their own list of what needed to be repaired and instead took the insurance company’s word for it, but they have agreed to send a site inspector out.”
CMSD received written confirmation in the minutes from the meeting that FEMA emailed on Monday.
Guild hopes to have a new number regarding FEMA by the end of August, as he will need between six to eight weeks to get everything to FEMA that it needs, then FEMA will need roughly 30 days to go over the information given before settling on a new number.
“We’re really happy that we were able to reconnect with FEMA for them to reevaluate the process and give us some promising information about the allocation (of funds),” CMSD Superintendent Cherie Labat told The Dispatch. “This is a good day for the community, for the city of Columbus, our students and their families. We’re very happy, … and we’re excited about moving forward and having a definitive plan to get started.”
Capital improvements
District maintenance manager Stephen Little updated the board members on various projects to improve parking lots around the district. Little said a few years back, most likely 2018, the board received bids but never acted upon them to fix the parking lots.
The main focus of Little’s concern is the high school parking lot, which is full of potholes and busted asphalt where the students park on the east side.
“The prices we were quoted are several years old and we’re looking at about a 15 to 18 percent price increase from what we were quoted anyway,” Little said. “What I’ve done for the past little while is I’ve bought some slag and filled those holes in and tried to smooth it out. That parking lot seems to need work done to it.”
Little’s next focus was the football and athletic field complex parking lots. The intersection of the softball field and baseball field is a particular spot of interest Little pointed out.
The board unanimously approved to advertise again for bids on the parking lot repairs as prices have changed since the last time bids were submitted.
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