Facilities Improvement Update

I would like to publicly apologize for being misled into a facilities improvement project which would have cost our residents $16.4 million dollars. I believe the board acted in good faith believing that we had good information from Johnson Controls. I believe we are guilty of trusting Johnsons Controls and their recommendations. Johnson Controls misled the board and me into believing we needed to make improvements to our buildings through Health and Safety funding. The district is going into mediation with Johnson Controls in an effort to get out of the contracts. I have learned a lot from this experience. The board and I are committed to doing what is in the best interest of the students, staff, parents and community members. The district has hired Deb Metz, who is representing the district in this facilities improvement project. The board has hired Hallberg Engineering to provide an independent neutral opinion as to the actual needs of our buildings. Hallberg identified similar issues with our facilities, but gave us less expensive solutions. The board has also enlisted community input by including three community members as part of our facilities committee. We have taken several steps in these past months to ensure we are making well informed decisions, assessing our needs and looking at all options available for improving our infrastructure with the intent of obtaining the most value for our costs.

The 12 person facilities committee met several times over the past 10 months, working diligently to learn about our mechanical systems, to understand how they function and to discuss and assess our needs. This was done with the goal of providing a comprehensive recommendation to the full board. I would like to thank all those involved including: Deb Metz; Kyle Simonson from Hallberg Engineering; the entire facilities committee including staff members Lorie Floura, Donnie Mayer, David Oehrlein, Max Meagher, Matt Dickhausen, and myself; board members David Johnson, Lew Storkamp and Mark Dingmann; community members Bob Pederson, Dick Johnson, and Paul Bugbee. Community members Dick Kruger, Daryl Larson and Bruce Vanderpool also provided much input throughout this process.

At our last board meeting on September 13, the board had a lengthy discussion on our operation referendum which will expire after the 2012-13 school year and our facilities needs. We feel both are important to the success of our schools. The board decided to put the facilities project on hold and focus their attention on the operating referendum. The board would like to recalibrate the pneumatic controls and complete a test & balance process to our current systems, in an attempt to get our systems working as efficiently as possible at minimal costs for the time being. The district will solicit bids and explore funding options to accomplish this task. The board believes dollars would be better spent educating our students vs. upgrading our buildings. These are tough economic times for all of us and we all are faced with difficult decisions on spending declining resources.

I would like to thank all of our board members for their dedication and commitment to making Paynesville Area Schools a great academic experience for our students.


Todd Burlingame
Superintendent of Schools