At its June 1 meeting, the Morton District 709 school board unanimously approved a bid to replace the gym floor at Morton Community High School.
“We started out thinking we had a $30,000 repair cost versus a $280,000 new floor,” said superintendent Roger Kilpatrick. “The question was do we want to invest the $30,000 or do we want to replace the floor now, because it was part of our long-range plan anyway.”
Kilpatrick added that factors including asbestos beneath the floor, the condition of the floor being worse than initially believed, and floor boards having to be specially made to match the old gym floor, the repair cost grew.
“What we finally concluded with the insurance carrier after looking at all the damage and all the projected costs of repair, is that we have a proposed settlement which we accepted from the insurance carrier of $152,500 for repair or replacement of the floor.”
The insurance carrier uses a depreciation factor, which Kilpatrick said means “if we don’t spend $152,000 they depreciate their repair estimate down to $120,000 so if we only spent $120,000, that’s all we would get. If we spend $152,000 we get $152,000.”
Replacement costs, which include removal of the floor, removal of asbestos, moving bleachers and replacing the floor, are estimated at $245,000.
“Our recommendation is that we accept the bids that we have, which are the bids for the gym floor itself, the new floor and for the asbestos removal, that we accept those bids so we go ahead and contract the work,” Kilpatrick said just before the vote.
In other business, the board:
• discussed a five-year property tax abatement.
“This issue was raised a number of months ago when we had a presentation from the representatives of the Economic Development Council,” Kilpatrick said. “We’re looking potentially at the ability for them as the economic development council to approach businesses — whether commercial, industrial — and look at the idea of either doing expansion or relocation to Morton. If they would do that, the taxing bodies — District 709 basically being the largest of the taxing bodies — would agree potentially to a five-year abatement.”
Kilpatrick said this loss of real estate taxes added to the district’s lack of state revenues could be an issue, but some would argue that this is the time to try to attract businesses to the area.
“We might want to look at it on an individual situation,” Kilpatrick said to the school board members. “As a public board, you have the right to look at it on an individual basis.”
