The Crookston Public Schools Bus Garage Committee met on Thursday at the Crookston High School. The plan remains to propose a bus garage on the Highland Elementary School property, as it wouldn’t require the district to purchase any new property.
However, a new location near the south end of the property was proposed as a way to use the existing pavement to reduce cost. The site needs to be vetted however as there is possible underground infrastructure for the school and/or city in the area that may not make it a viable option explained Superintendent Jeremy Olson. “We’re exploring a possible second site on the Highland property,” said Olson. “We’re looking to see if that could make it more cost effective. Until we get more information on that site we don’t know if it’s a viable option at this point.”
Olson said the committee is still exploring about four or five different options for buildings. “I think in the options we’ve explored tonight ranging from stick built to steel frame construction with heated and unheated in both options,” said Olson. “There is one option that separates out the type three storage, which would be the school suburban, trailers and some other items. We’re looking at about five different options right now. We believe all those options are a lower cost then what we looked at the last referendum. As far as driving value I think we’ve accomplished that. What we’re now looking at is what is the best option for Crookston moving forward?”
A comparison is also being made between drywall, which is cheaper and doesn’t require conduit but has increased risk of damage, versus steel panel walls in the garage which are more expensive, require conduit but less likely to become damaged said, Olson. “As we tried to drive value in the bus garage design one of the things that was brought up was being able to use wire without conduit if we have drywall walls. The problem with that is there was concern about drywall in a building like this. There was talk about steel panels vs. drywall. The drywall is a cheaper option but could be prone to damage. Whereas the steel panels would require conduit for the wiring.”
At the previous meeting, it was discussed that the air handling in the garage could be on a sensor system that would detect the air quality and start the air handling system when necessary. However, that system wouldn’t operate in temperatures below zero so the district would either need a heated garage or run the air handler constantly which would increase operational expenses. Since that solution, a third possible option using motion sensors has been identified explained Olson. “The sensor system there is still the concern about if it’s below zero the sensors not working properly,” said Olson. “To limit the amount of dollars put into air handling the option to use occupancy sensors were explored. Rather than sensing whether or not there were fumes or poor air quality the sensors would sense when someone was in the building, by movement, it would automatically turn on the air handlers for a predetermined amount of time and then shut down which would save us a lot of money on the air handling system in general.”
Olson said the cost of this system would be very comparable to the cost of the other to the other air quality sensors and significantly cheaper than Plymovent ® which had also been suggested. “This would be a very comparable cost, it’s more of a workaround,” said Olson. “Trying to figure out how we drive value in this project. Trying to find a value so we didn’t have to invest in a lot of expensive infrastructure. Another thing that was discussed was the Plymovent system. And as we started looking into the cost this would be a lower cost option than having Plymovent’s on each one of our buses.”
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