The Eastern Pulaski School Board continues planning for a large-scale paving project on the schools’ campus. Joe Briggs with Gibraltar Design reviewed the project scope and preliminary cost estimates with board members Monday.
Based on those estimates, Superintendent Dan Foster thinks the school corporation has enough money available to complete the base bid and Alternate 1, for about $2.2 million. That would include resurfacing the driveways and most of the parking lots on the schools’ campus.
Briggs said more severe problem areas would be excavated, and the asphalt would be removed, then replaced. There would also be some changes to the traffic flow around the schools, and the southwest and southeast entrances would be reconfigured. Plans also call for sidewalk repair around the school buildings and athletic facilities, as well as new sidewalks in some places.
However, a few items would remain on hold for now. Briggs recommending leaving tennis court upgrades off the project list, due to the complicated nature of the work. Similarly, school officials would like to remove the islands from the parking lots, due to the maintenance headaches that they cause. But the potential cost of the work means it would likely be delayed to future years.
The Eastern Pulaski School Board plans to continue discussing the project when it meets again this coming Monday. The project timeline calls for bids to be advertised by the end of the month, with a bid awarded in March. If all goes according to plan, the concrete work would begin in April, while the asphalt work will wait until school is out for summer.
Briggs said that schedule would work for potential contractors. The goal is to avoid the same problem the school corporation had last year, in which only one contractor ended up bidding.
