HUDSON–At its monthly board meeting last week, the Hudson school district voted for a referendum to fund roof repairs costing $6,190,000. The public will have a chance to support or reject the proposition in a special school election April 18 or 27.
Slides presented by George Keeler, the district’s director of buildings and grounds, showed peeling patches and buckling roofing material held down by ballast to prevent further wind damage. With work needed on the roofs of all three schools, the size of the job is too large for it to be done in-house by school personnel, he said. To save money the district is opting to repair, rather than replace the roofs, a much more expensive approach.
The 18-year-old roofs are near the end of their warranty, but John Sharkey of Rhinebeck Associates, the district’s architect, said that when the district’s most recent building projects were in the planning stages, the roofs were looked at and judged to be in good shape.
The current bid includes replacement of EPDM roofing, a cost-effective rubber roofing material that would be used on all the older roofs at the high school, intermediate and elementary schools and at the Claverack School. The job also includes gutter repair, and work on the cupola on the older section of the intermediate school.
The board also adopted a motion to use money from the capital reserve fund to offset $320,000 of district’s share of roof project. If the district is able to sign contracts by June 30, Hudson may be eligible for an extra 17% of state consolidation aid, which would amount to $1.5 million.
Board member Peter Meyer complained that the district should have redone the roofs as part of the building project instead of building the glass and brick entrance towers, two of which were included in the price of the new junior high wing and one–the new entrance to the high school–which was optional at $584,000.
The board voted for the tower in September 2008.
