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Lansing's TST (Tompkins Seneca Tioga) BOCES Board of Education member Pat Pryor reported Monday that an $8 million capital project may still be on hold.  Pryor said that if a grant application is not successful before the end of this year, construction may be pushed back an additional year.  Lansing School Superintendent Chris Pettograsso said that getting the grant is a main contingency imposed by the Ithaca School District when it agreed to funding the project.

"The situation with the capital project is still quite complicated," Pryor said.  "We still don't know for sure when we're going to be able to start on that, even if everything goes smoothly from here.  We have applied for a grant in addition to the capital project.  The grant has to go through its own approval project.  We are hoping to hear something about that grant before the holidays."

The purpose of the project is to repair roofs and infrastructure in nine buildings on the aging Warren Road campus.  The $8,044,020 capital project is targeted at repairs and safety.  It is slated to replace high voltage buried electrical distribution and transformers, replace buried high pressure gas distribution piping reconstruct campus wide paving, replace a ballasted roof on E building, replace and upgrade HVAC systems, and to replace original doors and window sills remaining in all buildings.  $4,571,575, or 58%, of the total cost is to be spent on Smith Special Education Building E, accounting for 45.04% of alterations in the project.

BOCES Capital projects can only go forward if all component school districts agree to contribute.  One 'no' vote can kill a project.  That is what BOCES officials were faced with this year when the Ithaca City School District postponed its vote.

As the largest of the nine component school systems, Ithaca pays the largest amount for capital projects.  With a $124,689,000 budget -- by contrast, Lansing's 2017-18 budget is $29,152,000.  Ithaca would have had to bond its share of the project because state mandate requires BOCES capital projects to count in tax cap calculations.    Ithaca's share of the project would be over $3 million of the total cost.  Lansing's share is 9.552%, or $765,000.

"Ithaca did eventually did vote 'yes' but with some contingencies attached to it," Pettograsso explained at Monday's Lansing Board Of Education meeting.  "Getting this grant is the main contingency.   If we get the grant we can all move forward with this capital project.  Every other school district voted for it positively, and everybody has to vote 'yes' for it to move forward."

When the project was presented to the component school districts BOCES officials projected construction would begin in the summer of 2018.  Pryor says if the grant decision goes beyond this year work can not begin until a year later.

"If we do not get a positive answer before the holidays then it will definitely be the summer of 2019 before we will be able to start," Pryor said.

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