By Raymond Neupert
WESTON, Wis. – D.C. Everest school officials are looking to borrow $25 million dollars to complete a massive district-wide building remodel to improve energy efficiency.
Administrator Jack Stoskopf says the funding will only be used to replace aging HVAC, lighting, heating, and air conditioning units across the district.
“There are a lot of restrictions on what we can borrow this money for, and we have to prove a certain amount of energy savings over time with the things that we do,” Stoskopf said.
He says the funding is not a blank check to perform other upgrades in the district or build new facilities.
Stoskopf says the size of the borrowing request is significant because the basic maintenance funding that’s included in every year’s budget is not enough to perform these sorts of major renovations.
“We’ve been able to do a lot of the primary things for our buildings with limited resources, but we’ve never had enough to upgrade anything,” Stoskopf said.
Heating and HVAC repairs at the junior high building will cost millions of dollars, Stoskopf said, and the district needs the larger influx of cash to afford full replacement of systems, some of which are 60 years old.
The bonding for the project is coming at a crucial time, according to Stoskopf. He says the district is coming off payments made previous bonds to construct the Middle School and Mountain Bay Elementary, and that means they can work this new funding into the schedule without affecting taxpayers.
“As that debt falls off, we can backfill with these projects so we can do it at very minimal cost to the taxpayer,” Stoskopf said.
A hearing on the bond issuance is taking place at 5 p.m. Wednesday, and the request will come before the full school board at their next meeting in December.
