The Warren County R-III School Board has approved proceeding with a food service facility, which has a projected cost of over $1.1 million.
The board voted 5-0 to approve the food service …
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The Warren County R-III School Board has approved proceeding with a food service facility, which has a projected cost of over $1.1 million.
The board voted 5-0 to approve the food service facility as presented during their Feb. 10 monthly meeting. Site work and building construction are currently estimated to cost $817,000, but the district’s projections also call for a 17% contingency budget for unexpected expenses, as well as 9% cushion for escalating costs between now and the time of construction.
Superintendent Gregg Klinginsmith noted at this month’s school board meeting that the food service department has $1.3 million in their account.
“We are required to spend that food service money down and can only spend it on food service items. We can’t spend it on anything else,” Klinginsmith said. “There’s definitely a need for this facility for storage … for our food service department.”
The proposed food storage facility would be about 4,100 square feet, Klinginsmith said. The total proposed costs for just the building (not including site work) came in at $750,000. This includes an expected $225,000 for a kitchen area and $200,000 for an office area. A prefabricated cooler and freezer with roofing is anticipated to cost $125,000, while prefabricated dry storage is projected to cost $125,000, according to the estimate.
“We will be managing the project ourselves as our own general manager, so there might be some adjustments to the drawings a little bit,”Klinginsmith said. “But just in general the layout, what it would look like is basically the pole barn with a big freezer in it, some dry storage, some office space, the conference room, about 4,100 square feet roughly.
“We do hope that the (cost) estimate is high,” Klinginsmith added. “Because we know the construction costs we’ve seen in some other districts, it’s been much higher than anticipated.”
Board member Sarah Janes questioned what the district would do if the project is approved and then the cost increases way above what the food service department has in their budget.
If this was the case, the district would not proceed or would pause the project, Klinginsmith said.
“We would just not do it,” Klinginsmith said. “So we’ll get bids for the project and we’ll just have to pause if we’re part way through. If the money’s not there, the money’s not there. We are anticipating some additional revenue for food service this year above what we budgeted. So we feel comfortable the money’s going to be there.”
Board member Jeff Schneider said he believes this is the best option for the food service improvements. The board has debated several options and done a good amount of due diligence to explore options, he said.
