(Audubon) Audubon Superintendent Eric Trager said their large asbestos abatement project in the Middle School/High School building is mostly complete. The asbestos abatement project is in preparation for their big renovation project next summer.
“Folks will see that our walls don’t look quite as nice as they used to because we had to abate all of the one inch square tile in our hallways and so they look a little tough, but it will be worth it in the long run,” said Trager.
The other big project they had this summer was some of the HVAC on the north end of the building. That work will finish up next week.
Meanwhile, Trager said they are in the middle of their Design/Development phase of the renovation project. He said they had a budget review done, which came in over budget.
“That’s not a surprise to us. When we decided we were going to ask the taxpayers to pass a bond issue we wanted to be as conservative as possible on the amount and so we have a contingency plan if our bids actually come in over kind of where we expect them to that we can be nimble and either have some alternates in the project that we can choose not to do and also some opportunities to raise additional funds with our additional funding stream,” explained Trager.
Trager said the other side of that is they want to make sure that going forward they don’t leave the District short on cash with those funding streams. So, he said they will be very careful about that and conservative with those funds.
“You know, not great news that it comes in over budget, but we’ve got a plan to be nimble on bid day and make sure that at the end of the day we have a project that the community can be proud of and that will last hopefully for a long, long time,” said Trager.
