School board to revisit Evans Middle School renovation project

By MARK NEWMAN Courier staff writer

June 24, 2008 12:25 am

— OTTUMWA — The Ottumwa school board will be asked to expand the scope of renovations at Evans Middle School this week.
What could make it easier for the board to vote “yes” is a recent change to Iowa law: the School Infrastructure Local Option Sales Tax (SILO), which adds a penny to local sales tax to allow school to maintain or construct buildings.
Now that SILO has gone statewide, there will be some “equalization” in the amount each district gets.
“Because that passed, it’s going to allow us to complete the project as we had originally planned,” said Evans Principal Davis Eidahl. “With the amount of money that we were going to generate [originally], we had to trim some things off.”
For example, the whole building, old and new, would now be heated and cooled by the geothermal system. Items like that could have been taken care of sometime in the future, or done by district employees as they had spare time.
“Now, we’re able to finish the project the way we had planned, instead of having to wait a number of years,” said Eidahl. “Now that we have the resources, we can get it done prior to the sixth-graders coming to Evans.”
The change order is for $2.165 million.
“The nice thing about this is, whether you’re sitting in the existing building or in the addition, you’re going to be sitting in a new classroom,” Eidahl said.
According to the school board agenda, in addition to a “yes” vote by the board, for this “change order” to go through Wednesday, the district’s bank would have to allow additional funds to be borrowed against estimated SILO revenue.
The meeting is set for 4:45 p.m. Wednesday at the board office, 422 McCarroll Drive.
Mark Newman can be reached at 683-5358 or by e-mail at mgnewman@mchsi.com.