While the people
in Columbia City are hammering the last nail in place just in
the nick of time, those in Clatskanie are shaping their presentations
for a bond election in the near future. In the meantime, volunteers
are raising a new bus barn in Warrenton and the elevator will
soon be waiting to lift you in Rainier. Each of these projects
will be detailed by timing, cost and those involved in the paragraphs
below.
St. Helens School District #502
Columbia City Elementary and the new Lewis and Clark Elementary School are both under fast and furious schedules for completion. The Columbia City school is due for this school year, Lewis and Clark will not be housing students until the 2000-2001 school year .
In the case of Columbia City, the school district has kept the existing 72-year-old building as the focal point and added over 40,000 square feet of new school around it. The original Columbia City Elementary was built in 1927. It had two classrooms and could serve around 50 students. The original school is now the library for the new school, retaining its character and row of front-facing, rope-pulley windows. The school is now designed to close-off the administration and student classroom wings in the evening hours, making the library available to the community for meetings or research. The budget for the project is $4,449,279 and the architect is David R. Garnand of Ellis Eslick Associates/Architects P.C. of Portland and Lease Crutcher Lewis is the general. Subcontractors include Cascade Fire Protection; Clair Company, Inc engineers, D&B Interiors; Fullman Service mechanical; Systems West Engineers, Inc.; Vickers Foster and Associates as owner representative; VIVID Technology Systems; Walker/Diloreto/Younie, Inc. civil engineers; and Westech Engineering, Inc as consulting engineer.
The larger school will now accommodate 350 students.
Not far from Columbia City, in the heart of St. Helens, the school district is in the process of demolishing the old Condon Elementary School (built in 1936) and erecting, next to the old school, a brand new Lewis and Clark Elementary School. Lewis and Clark will encompass 79,200 square feet and house 750 students. This project, which shares the same contractor list with Columbia City Elementary, is costing $8,573,248 and will serve students from both Condon and Gumm elementary schools in St. Helens.
Clatskanie School District #6J
Projects the St. Helens School District are just completing are the stuff of dreams within the Clatskanie School District. Superintendent Earl Fisher is in the process of doing his "homework" in preparation for passing a mail-in bond election November 2, 1999. A new committee has been formed to accomplish that goal.
The work began with a another committee named the Facility Study Committee which made a report to the Clatskanie School Board last February. The Facility Committee met six times to work with Dan Sandall with DLR Group, architects. The opinion of the committee is that the best plan of action is to build a new school.
Currently, there are five school buildings within the Clatskanie School District, but only two of those are operational. The buildings are in need of repair, facing compliance with ADA requirements and too expensive to staff for this school district facing its first full school year split off from former district partner Knappa School District #4.
Currently there are approximately 473 children enrolled in a building housing students in grades kindergarten through 5th grade, and 542 in a building for 6th through 12th grades. The administration's current headquarters are in the Westport school, which is listed with agents of Windermere for sale.
Clatskanie Grade School was built in 1927 and had remodels completed in 1947 and 1963. Clatskanie Middle School, now abandoned, was built in 1949 with a gym added in 1980. Clatskanie High School was built in 1978.
According to committee member Ron Puzey, an example of building problems faced by the district may be seen in the situation with the library. Currently smaller children are unable to access portions of the school library because it is located upstairs in the old school building. Fire code requirements prohibit the access for safety and fire exit reasons.
It was recently discovered that another building was in need of extensive sewer work, still others need renovations for functionality.
According to a report prepared by DLR Group and released by Earl Fisher, it is estimated they will need an $18.8 million bond issue to complete the work.
The work has been broken out into essentially three projects: a new k-8 school that will include a covered play area (estimated budget almost $16 million), modernization at Clatskanie High School (essential systems repair estimated at over $3 million), and redevelopment of the Clatskanie Middle School (estimated cost almost $200,000.)
The K-8 school is proposed to have 24 general classrooms, 2 kindergarten classrooms, 6 small group spaces, 2 science rooms with prep and storage space, 2 computer labs, administrative offices and one each of the following: media center, cafeteria, gymnasium, special education room, kitchen, music room, storage space, student store, vocational shops and a choir room. Total required space when you add all those up and throw in rest rooms, mechanical etc, is over 80,000 square feet! The covered play area alone has a construction total of $50,000 with a total budget of $83,000. Covered play areas are generally a good idea in two extremes of the country: Arizona schools need them to protect the students from heat, we have them for rain.
Systems repair work at the Clatskanie High School (which is currently housing both high school and middle school students) include almost $600,000 in exterior improvements, almost a million dollars in heating and ventilation upgrades and almost a quarter of a million dollars in ADA improvements that are required for access.
Redevelopment of the now-closed Clatskanie Middle School includes a front office remodel of $56,000, installation of a sprinkler system for $76,000, and exterior improvements to the property that will exceed $30,000.
Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? And yet, "The requested amount will keep our bond levy rate at about $1.95 per thousand on a twenty-year bond sale," said Fisher, "the cost of a cup of coffee."
The public information committee that was recently formed to work on the bond election has a lot of work ahead of them. First they had to file to establish the new committee with both Clatsop and Columbia counties, since the school district straddles the county line. Second, they need to review and purge the voting records of those that will be included in the mail-in ballot. "An initial review of the polls," said Ron Puzey, "shows all kinds of names on here. There are people on this list that have been dead for ten years, and some who moved away at least fifteen years ago." If those names remain on the ballot list and the recipients do not respond, their vote will be counted as a no vote, against the bond request.
Next steps for the committee include a meeting Wednesday, September 15 at 7pm in Clatskanie. It will be held upstairs in the banquet room of Humps Restaurant in the center of town. All interested parties are encouraged to attend. At the meeting they will discuss "talking points" for committee members to get the information out correctly and consistently to the community, and the development of flyers and an ad campaign. They also plan to incorporate a telephone "call-down" to ensure everybody is reached.
Both Fisher and Puzey commented that the Clatskanie School District used to be a source of pride and a draw for people to move to the community. They both hope the work they envision for the school district will help reinstate that era.
Warrenton/Hammond S.D. #30
Renee' Tikkala has been a bus driver for 20 years. She is a driver and maintenance supervisor for the Warrenton School District. She would really like a place to keep her buses, and work on them, inside, out of the rain. With the help of the Oregon Army National Guard 442nd Engineer Detachment, she is getting her wish.
The Army National Guard performs many services for the community, from serving as security forces during the visit of the U.S.S. Missouri, to fighting forest fires, installing manholes and repairing the roads. Sgt. Allan De Haan would like us to know more about Guard activities. "I was out for 20 years and got back in because I like the Guard and what it does," he said. Sgt. DeHaan is the project site director assigned to the Warrenton Bus Barn. He and his boss, Sgt. First Class Gates, have helped Renee' from the beginning.
Other guardsmen and women have been cycling in and out of work on the Warrenton bus barn as their work schedule dictates. The Guard considers these type of projects as a community service and as good training. "We work with different types of equipment, work with building forms for pouring concrete, it's good training," continued DeHaan.
Time and materials for the project have been donated by the following: Nygaard, rock; Jim Rankin engineering blueprints and structural; Randy Stempel, blueprints; Chuck Bergerson, blueprints and materials list; Bayview, rock; Rod and Gil Gramson, fill and sand; Willamette, lumber; Renee" Tikkala and Dave Visser, LOTS of time. Due to the volunteer nature of the project, and cycling of training workforce, it should be completed in two years.
Rainier School District #13
The Rainier School District is installing an elevator in the Rainier Middle School in compliance with ADA regulations. Hollinger Construction Inc. from Longview, Washington is performing the work. The budget for the project is $232,395 and it should be completed by December of this year. LCB
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