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4 BEFORE THE WYOMING STATE LEGISLATURE
5 SELECT COMMITTEE ON SCHOOL FACILITIES
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON SCHOOL FACILITIES PROCEEDINGS
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11:08 a.m., Thursday
10 June 21, 2002
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 SENATOR DEVIN: Let's call our Select
3 Committee on School Facilities together. And we have a
4 couple of time constraints. This is kind of awkward,
5 because our court reporter needs a break about every
6 hour and a half, and our consultants from MGT, have,
7 under the transition process, Update A, B and C to
8 cover. And we need them here. I've just been informed
9 they have a plane to catch out of Billings this
10 afternoon. And 2:00 would be good. 3:00 would be nip
11 and tuck.
12 SENATOR COE: How about 1:00?
13 SENATOR DEVIN: Hey, he's going to move
14 this along. And so we'll proceed as best we can. Let
15 me just kind of give you a review. Does everyone have
16 the transition process?
17 MR. NELSON: It was mailed out, and we
18 have extra copies.
19 SENATOR DEVIN: We'll need an extra copy.
20 Bubba and I have been doing two days of school meetings.
21 What we have primarily talked about that will probably
22 be needed by this committee, just so that you can do
23 some planning, would be the fact that we will need
24 probably a minimum of two meetings. And if you look on
25 page 2, where we talk about remedies, remedy proposals
3
1 will be submitted in time sufficient for presentation
2 and discussion at an August meeting.
3 So I would anticipate that because that remedy
4 process will be on its way and we would need to do some
5 interchange with that group, that August would be a
6 likely time for that meeting.
7 And the other that we know will probably be
8 required would be September. But I can't -- or
9 December. I'm sorry. December, right before the
10 session. What I can't tell you, then, for sure is how
11 much we're going to need to interact with the commission
12 over the September, October, November period and where
13 everyone's going to be on their work.
14 So there may be one, possibly two other
15 meetings thrown in there if they're needed. But that's
16 about as far as we are at this point, because everybody
17 is so new on board and pulling stuff together, that
18 we've been trying to keep it moving. But that's kind of
19 where we are.
20 The work plan or the outline that's kind of
21 been laid out is in this transition.
22 Dave, would you like to walk through that or
23 make any comments on answering questions we have?
24 MR. NELSON: Sure, Madam Chair. The
25 first parts on that are the Sheridan-Powell review
4
1 process. And that will be a remedy to be forwarded by
2 JAC through the budget process and to work with the
3 commission to the extent they can in presenting that to
4 them.
5 Essentially Part B of this shows you kind of
6 the time lines that we've set out there. The JAC will
7 meet the 9th and 10th in Powell. At that time they will
8 get a proposed remedy from MGT. They will then make
9 their decision on how to forward that remedy.
10 At that point in time, planning money will be
11 released to the two involved districts to go out and do
12 necessary schematic documents. That will be then
13 resubmitted back to MGT by mid October. MGT then will
14 use that information to develop final remedies, reports
15 and cost recommendations to the JAC by a December 1
16 report date. JAC then will have that time frame to go
17 forward with their recommendations, their budget and
18 their financing to be part of the budget. And that
19 would complete the Phase 1 cycle.
20 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman, a
21 question on the process. On the planning funds that
22 have already been appropriated and being held
23 somewhere -- I suppose Department of Education or
24 something -- and then those funds will be released from
25 the Department of Ed based on JAC recommendations?
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1 MR. NELSON: Right.
2 SENATOR CATHCART: Because a standing
3 committee doesn't release money.
4 MR. NELSON: Right. The law is that they
5 cannot release those funds until you have developed a
6 remedy. And they will then be released.
7 The second part of these deal with the
8 immediate needs list. Those are those projects that
9 appear in that subsection A there. They're all
10 identified. There are twelve of them. We originally
11 started with fourteen.
12 One of them is the Central Middle School,
13 and that is taken off. And there was one -- another is
14 a portable building, which is not subject to this
15 process. So those are the twelve projects that will be
16 forwarded. And the School Facilities Commission
17 initiates this process through the state superintendent
18 and the help of this committee. So you will be active
19 in the remediation of these needs, working with the
20 commission.
21 Where we're at with those is that the
22 Department of Education, acting on behalf of the newly
23 appointed commission, has entered into contract with
24 MGT to begin to develop proposed remedies for these
25 identified needs. They then hopefully -- and Dodds is
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1 going to elaborate on all of this -- will get back to
2 you all by the middle of October -- or August, excuse
3 me, middle of August -- with a proposed remedy on these
4 twelve needs.
5 At that point then the department releases
6 planning money like we did with the others for these
7 districts to go out and develop the necessary planning
8 documents for the remedies that are forwarded by the
9 commission and this group.
10 At that point they have until -- I believe
11 it's October 15th to get that back to you. It's
12 November 1. November 1. This is shifted back a couple
13 weeks. We gave you an extra two weeks. By November 1
14 they have to get the planning documents back to MGT, who
15 then brings recommendations to the commission and to
16 this committee, kind of acting together, to forward to
17 the legislature for the next session on these twelve
18 projects.
19 So it's a very hurried process. But the ball
20 has kept rolling, so to speak. So that's kind of the
21 outline of what Dodds will elaborate on in a little bit.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman?
23 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes, Representative
24 Simpson.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Just to clarify,
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1 the Item 1 issues, those budget recommendations were for
2 planning monies only at 250,000 apiece?
3 MR. NELSON: Right.
4 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes, Representative
5 Baker?
6 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman,
7 the discussion -- the outline leaves some pretty
8 significant holes here, in my opinion, as to oversight
9 on this process. So as the JAC develops its proposed
10 remedy, that is not a development, at least at the first
11 point of a budget, but as a proposed remedy for these
12 particular schools here?
13 MR. NELSON: Right.
14 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: This is just
15 theoretically if we build here and we remodel here and
16 we do those kind of things. Is that correct?
17 MR. NELSON: You submit those
18 recommendations to the legislature.
19 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Right.
20 MR. NELSON: Somehow.
21 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Between the time
22 that the JAC meets in July and before it gets to the
23 legislature, a budget for this is going to have to be
24 developed, and that is going to be worked between
25 MGT and the JAC? Okay.
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1 And the next step, these other facilities, the
2 immediate needs and identification for them, those would
3 be turned over to the commission, and they would develop
4 the proposed remedies, rather than JAC. Is that
5 correct?
6 MR. NELSON: Right. Right.
7 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: At that point, or
8 as they're considering this, the commission member --
9 Charlie, since you're the only one here, it appears to
10 me that this committee has got to develop some
11 guidelines to tell them -- I'll use one in particular.
12 I know about this. It's in my district now. It's
13 Hyattville Elementary. Last time I knew, there were two
14 individuals in Hyattville Elementary. I hear the
15 clanking of a bulldozer. You understand what I'm
16 saying.
17 But are we going to, as a committee, direct
18 them as to what they would do in those particular areas,
19 or do we just launch them out there and then we come
20 back and shoot down their ideas if we say we don't like
21 that or we do like that? Where do we envision direction
22 for the commission coming from?
23 SENATOR DEVIN: Well, I guess -- Charlie,
24 did you have a comment? We have some amount of that
25 addressed to the legislature. But there's much greater
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1 detail.
2 MR. WARE: Charles Ware with the School
3 Facilities Commission, as a commissioner wearing a
4 different hat right now than I normally wear.
5 Representative Baker's question is good.
6 People have been asking me, when does the commission
7 take over? And I think we can all work closely enough
8 together. But what I'm hearing right now is,
9 technically we're going to take over, even with the
10 Powell and Sheridan projects, which partially, in my
11 mind, I thought since it was work in progress, we, as a
12 commission, would not be involved in, but would draw a
13 line in the sand, and then we would go forward from
14 there.
15 So I think we just need to talk through this.
16 And I'm speaking not as chairman of the commission.
17 But, you know, we're all plowing new ground here and
18 going down a new road. And one thing we can do is talk
19 to each other.
20 So I don't have any clear answer. But I --
21 the work in progress and what the appropriations
22 committee has in the budget, et cetera, we honestly do
23 not have any knowledge of at this point. We can get
24 ourselves up to speed. But there has to be some type of
25 learning curve on our part. I don't think we can really
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1 step in between now and October and come up with
2 recommendations for these projects very intelligently, I
3 guess would be the adjective I'd use.
4 SENATOR DEVIN: And I guess I would see
5 this process as having to remain a little fluid.
6 Because I think that the Park and Sheridan school
7 projects are with the JAC, and they're probably going to
8 need to -- now, this is just a personal view. They're
9 going to need to remain with the JAC until other
10 entities are established enough and prepared enough and
11 up to date enough to take those pieces over. Because
12 otherwise we're going to have people shuffled back and
13 forth between two entities, and you're not going to feel
14 up to speed.
15 And I guess my personal feeling would be that
16 we be as consistent with these as we can and we leave
17 them with the JAC until you feel you have enough
18 organization in the office and your commission to begin
19 to take over. And that may be after the next session.
20 But once we get after the next session and the money is
21 out there and you're on board and we're starting to talk
22 about construction, et cetera, et cetera, then I think
23 it's perfectly appropriate, probably, that you would be
24 ready to come on board in those two projects.
25 I don't know if anyone else feels like that
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1 consistency is important and that we not overload with
2 something that is moving, that we not overload them
3 immediately with those size of projects, if we can keep
4 moving over here and hand them over at a later point.
5 I look at the Phase 1 projects. Actually,
6 they're two different projects, as much as Powell had
7 come in with a design previously and brought it to the
8 board, which we significantly downsized it because of
9 the size of the population. And so they're coming back
10 with a redesign.
11 I think Sheridan has taken another tack. And
12 I think they, in fact, are going in the direction that
13 we hoped all the districts would go in, inasmuch as
14 they're developing a budget and a program before they
15 get involved with a design process. I mean, this is
16 essentially what you give your architect, a program and
17 a budget. So I think that certainly the commission
18 could get involved in Sheridan, because that would be
19 their first case that hopefully would come on board the
20 way we're going to do most of our projects.
21 Now, the Powell project, I think, is a little
22 different, inasmuch as I think they're redesigning and
23 coming back. They're not in a schematic state, are
24 they, Dodds? They had a preliminary when they came to
25 us originally.
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1 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, basically
2 both districts are conceptually at the same point,
3 because Powell has changed their proposal and is about
4 the same point as Sheridan is. Other than the fact that
5 Powell has an architect involved, they're about the same
6 point of developing the proposal. And we've reviewed
7 those proposals, and we'll have recommendations for
8 those remedies on July 9th or 10th.
9 SENATOR DEVIN: But where we're at with
10 this point is, our new director of the Office of School
11 Facilities came on board like a day ago. And there is
12 no staff hired there. And if I recall, they need to
13 develop all of the rules and regs and so forth. So that
14 development all needs to occur.
15 Plus, what we're going to hear about later is,
16 they need to get the district planning process in motion
17 with each of the districts. So I guess I'm looking for
18 an exchange here of work load. I'm not sure that we can
19 absolutely say, okay, here you are, it's yours, and be
20 able to expect that all to happen. I would see some
21 consistency.
22 SENATOR MASSIE: Madam Chairman, I would
23 agree. I think that that's a good point. We have to
24 have a transition for the commission to get up and
25 running. And before they take the ball, we fit in as
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1 sort of a consulting group, I think, this committee, and
2 offer some ideas and then help bring that to the
3 legislature.
4 For this year, it's my understanding that
5 what's in Phase 1, the Joint Appropriations Committee is
6 going to take that. And the commission for these two
7 projects will sort of be in the opposite role. And that
8 is, they'll be consultants. Not consultants, but
9 they'll be out there offering consultation and
10 suggestions as JAC guides this thing through the
11 process, just like it has in the last couple of
12 sessions.
13 Where I'm a little confused is when -- given
14 that we need that transition, I think your time frame is
15 also correct. Probably after the next session, then --
16 it's going to take that long for the commission really
17 to get up and rolling, have rules and regs and staff in
18 place.
19 What about these Phase 2 projects? Are we --
20 with regard to page 2, under B, the remedy process, is
21 it the expectation -- it appears that the commission is
22 taking these Phase 2 projects much like JAC is taking
23 the Phase 1 projects. So Phase 2 projects appear to be
24 with the commission. And they're going to start taking
25 those and running with them.
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1 Now, is the expectation from this wording for
2 us to fund those Phase 2 projects at the next session?
3 And if so, then we do seem to have a conflict. Because
4 they're not going to be up and running to provide
5 million dollar recommendations for all of these things.
6 Or is the expectation that we're paying for the planning
7 at this point, and we're not going to fund these
8 particular schools from Big Horn and Goshen County until
9 the 2004 session?
10 I guess that's my question. What are we doing
11 with the Phase 2 ones as far as this timing of handing
12 it over to the commission?
13 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
14 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, I think that
15 the process, as we discussed during the session when we
16 were going through this bill, was to keep all of these
17 projects going to the extent we could, realizing that
18 the commission would take some time to get together.
19 There was a large amount of money appropriated to the
20 governor and to the superintendent to initiate this and
21 to do a lot of this work by contracting with MGT. So
22 there will be remedies developed.
23 Now, those remedy proposals are just that,
24 proposals. I think it was envisioned that this
25 committee and the commission try to assemble
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1 recommendations for the '03 session and that the
2 financing -- I mean, there are a lot of issues involved
3 in that -- also was to be forwarded somehow in a budget
4 for these projects as a part of an overall
5 recommendation. And that's why the compressed time
6 frame of getting all this together.
7 But like the planning money, the
8 appropriations were geared towards that, the dollar
9 amounts contained in the appropriation to the governor
10 to keep this process going.
11 SENATOR DEVIN: Dodds, did you have --
12 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, we've put
13 together a proposal and a schedule so that the second
14 group of schools will be on the same schedule as Powell
15 and Sheridan by December. So we will, in the next month
16 and a half, review these schools and come up with a
17 proposed remedy and present that to either the JAC or
18 the commission, whichever is appropriate.
19 And then once that remedy is approved and
20 planning money is funded, then the schematic plans will
21 be prepared by November 1st. And then we will review
22 those and then make a recommendation to the JAC or the
23 commission in December. In other words, at least we've
24 thought through that schedule, and we think it's very
25 doable.
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1 SENATOR DEVIN: And we may need to -- we
2 may need to talk about that a little more today.
3 Because, you know, while you've been into this and your
4 work is moving along and you've got the schedule, which
5 I very much appreciate, I think Senator Massie's point
6 is well iterated, in that the commission may not be
7 ready to get all that dumped in their lap by mid August,
8 either. We may need to talk about how that's going to
9 go.
10 Representative Simpson.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
12 I have a different sense of it. I think that Powell,
13 Park and Sheridan should -- they should all be included
14 together. And I think that because of what has occurred
15 maybe last session with JAC, Buffalo, Kaycee, you're
16 throwing another entity in to make decisions.
17 But I'd rather see MGT act as the consultant
18 to the School Facilities Commission on those schools,
19 also. I think they're both at the same place. They're
20 at a conceptual stage. The only thing we've
21 appropriated is planning money of a quarter million
22 dollars each. So I don't see that there's a great
23 distinction between them, other than possibly the lack
24 of expert -- or the lack of ability right now of the
25 commission to step in.
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1 But MGT's role as the consultant, to me, is to
2 ramp up the commission to the point where they can then
3 do those things. But it seems to me that JAC's role is
4 further down the line, just as it would be with the
5 water -- a water project and the Water Development
6 Commission. You're not involved at this stage in that
7 process, so let's try and be a little more consistent
8 and use our consultant who has the expertise and move it
9 down the road to the commission. That's my sense of the
10 thing.
11 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman?
12 SENATOR DEVIN: Senator Cathcart.
13 SENATOR CATHCART: Well, Madam Chairman,
14 in response to that, at this stage in water development,
15 JAC is not involved. However, we do have the select
16 money -- Select Water Committee, which, in fact, holds
17 joint meetings with the Water Development Commission.
18 And at this point, especially in transition --
19 now, I don't know what this committee's budget is or the
20 JAC budget. But it really makes good sense to me at
21 this point, especially in a transition period, that when
22 the commission meets, maybe it should be a joint meeting
23 so that we can smooth things through the first couple of
24 years of this process so that when the commission comes
25 to JAC with recommendations, there has at least been
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1 legislative involvement and understanding of how they
2 arrived at those recommendations.
3 So it really makes some sense to me. And
4 we're talking -- one of the topics here is organization
5 for the interim, whether this committee or JAC -- I'm
6 not sure which is appropriate. Probably this committee
7 at this point -- work in joint interim meetings with the
8 commission in developing those recommendations going
9 into this first year.
10 SENATOR DEVIN: Mr. Nelson, could you
11 clear up for me -- my recollection, without having it in
12 front of me, is that the legislation specifically
13 addressed the Park and Sheridan projects, in that they
14 would remain with JAC for the determination of the
15 remedy and the release of the planning.
16 MR. NELSON: Right, Madam Chairman.
17 SENATOR DEVIN: So I think that's what
18 the legislation said. Now, I think where we move into
19 question -- and then they would transition to the
20 commission.
21 MR. NELSON: There was language in there
22 that they were to do the remedies and to work in
23 conjunction with the commission to the extent it was
24 feasible. And so there was some thought given to
25 bringing it together. But clearly, the remedy and the
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1 initial process was with the JAC to forward that at the
2 legislature.
3 SENATOR DEVIN: So I think that's
4 specific in the legislation.
5 MR. NELSON: Right.
6 SENATOR DEVIN: But the other twelve
7 projects were then to be -- the remedy was there, and
8 they were to be dealt with between this committee and
9 the commission and JAC until they could be handed
10 over -- until the commission was prepared to have them
11 handed over. And I think that's part of it. But we
12 will have a whole other immediate needs list come on
13 board. Is it October or November?
14 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, there's not
15 a definite requirement set in law anymore. The
16 commission is to schedule state needs annually. So they
17 will have to get that process going.
18 The other comment I'll make about transition
19 process was that a lot of the thinking behind this was
20 to keep in the court schedule. And that was why the
21 twelve projects, I'll call them, was set at that pace,
22 to kind of get -- because if you recall, Powell was
23 brought in at an earlier time. We just didn't deal with
24 it. We kind of put it back and said, wait. We don't
25 like this process.
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1 So they were kind of delayed. And then in the
2 session, Sheridan got added to that and then the next
3 list. So it was kind of -- but the original thought was
4 to try to keep them in tune with the court schedule.
5 SENATOR DEVIN: I think JAC has meetings
6 scheduled. And there would be nothing -- no problem
7 with trying to get some joint work with the commission,
8 probably. But that way Park and Sheridan could move
9 ahead. Because you have that schedule already, I think.
10 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: We have the 9th
11 and 10th scheduled. And the commission is certainly
12 going to be invited.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
14 could somebody clarify what "facility remedy" means in
15 terms of what the JAC will do?
16 MR. NELSON: For the remedy to the
17 inadequacy. That could be a complete new building. It
18 could be a remodel. It could be nothing other than
19 directing them to fix it with major maintenance.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: I'm just
21 wondering, this is based on the current square footage
22 standards, program standards and setting the budget and
23 then allowing the release of the planning funds with,
24 here's the program, here's the budget, and go plan it?
25 MR. NELSON: We have the -- nothing new
21
1 has been added. The same standards would be carried
2 forward.
3 SENATOR DEVIN: And I guess the one
4 question you raise in my mind as you say that is, I'm
5 not sure -- I don't know how much -- and maybe co-chair
6 could help. I don't know how much of the budget would
7 be set at that point before the planning money is
8 released. There may be parameters that could be set.
9 But that's the one piece I couldn't tell you a yes or no
10 on.
11 But I think the other is that that
12 determination -- there seems to be sufficient data to
13 support a new building, or there is sufficient data to
14 support the fact that this could be renovated. And that
15 could be called a remedy. Or there's sufficient major
16 maintenance money to do it. So the remedy is
17 determined, and then you go forward with the planning
18 money.
19 SENATOR MASSIE: Madam Chairman, it seems
20 to me that perhaps what we're saying is that for those
21 in Phase 1, it's pretty clear-cut what the process is.
22 And they've actually started through with the JAC. On
23 Phase 2, with those twelve projects, since the attention
24 is to also bring those in front of the 2003 session, it
25 appears that the commission and this committee are going
22
1 to have to work pretty closely together to go through
2 this process. And thankfully, we have a couple folks
3 from JAC here.
4 So in some ways, all three groups can do that.
5 Then with those facilities that the commission
6 identifies in the fall as the next group of immediate
7 needs, then those will be processed through in the --
8 we'll implement a process that's going to be more of a
9 traditional process as established by law. And that is,
10 the commission will take more control of that, with us
11 going into kind of a phase as being folks who commit on
12 the side and then take that to the legislature. Is that
13 what I'm hearing?
14 MR. NELSON: That was right.
15 SENATOR DEVIN: And perhaps some of the
16 details that Representative Baker asked about in terms
17 of these twelve projects and needing to provide some
18 guidance as we get some report on those later, then at
19 that point or when that report is finished, we could
20 discuss some of those areas.
21 I would hope you would raise the issues if you
22 see something that it looks like there's going to need
23 to be some beginnings of policy discussion. As
24 Representative Baker raises, with two students, do you
25 build a new school, or do you look at other
23
1 alternatives? And I think the legislation actually
2 specifies that we're required to look at the
3 alternatives.
4 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: I just want to
5 amplify that just a little bit. You know, as you look
6 at the twelve here, six of them are in one county. Five
7 of those are in one school district, which the
8 majority -- actually, all five of those buildings are
9 within no more than fifteen miles of existing facilities
10 in other districts that are well above the standards, as
11 a matter of fact, have room in them.
12 So I think there's some important points here
13 that need to be made before proposed remedies are out
14 there and expectations are raised. The JAC got a lot of
15 flack. And that's okay.
16 SENATOR COE: You caused it.
17 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: I caused it, yeah.
18 Because expectations were raised. As a matter of fact,
19 I was told by some people that once the expectations are
20 raised, you've got to -- you should be funding to that
21 level. Well, let's not go there if we don't have to.
22 And I don't think we have to.
23 I would want to make sure, before a proposed
24 remedy is even out there for public consumption, that
25 some work be done behind the scenes to make sure that
24
1 that is appropriate for what we would like to do as the
2 policymakers for the state of Wyoming. Are we going to,
3 in small rural districts, replace every school building?
4 Are we going to, in large districts, replace every
5 school building? Those kind of policy decisions, we
6 need to be making and then turn that policy, if you
7 will, over to MGT and to the commission, in my opinion.
8 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
9 MR. WARE: Madam Chairman, I'd like to
10 comment, too, as far as the commission side. I'll do my
11 little report later. But I see, too -- not that we
12 can't. But the new commission and this committee need
13 to work very much hand in glove, because we have another
14 factor in here, that in a few months we're going to have
15 a new Superintendent of Public Education and a new
16 governor. And the deputy of the education department is
17 also leaving.
18 So we -- we need to hang together, because
19 we're going to be the only ones that are going to have
20 consistency as we make this transition and new policies
21 come into effect along with MGT.
22 So I see -- back on the Sheridan-Powell
23 situation, that we just really need to work hand in
24 glove. And from the construction side of things and
25 moving things forward, we sure don't want to slow the
25
1 process down, because the contractor needs to get
2 scheduled, and the building design needs to get
3 scheduled. So we need to keep moving along.
4 And again, a lot of decisions have been made
5 by JAC that this commission really doesn't have any
6 knowledge of. And we need to get up to speed on that.
7 And I personally don't see any problem in working very
8 closely together as we start developing the whole policy
9 and procedures thing.
10 SENATOR DEVIN: Representative Simpson.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
12 I have a question about the statute that directs the
13 commission to establish the adequacy standards. And
14 JAC would be, I'm sure, using the current adequacy
15 standards that had been proposed by MGT and essentially
16 approved -- I'm not sure formally -- but approved by the
17 Department of Education. Are we anticipating the
18 commission to develop different adequacy standards?
19 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, I think they
20 would be carried forward. And they, as a body, may or
21 may not as the need arises. I mean, that would be their
22 purview. They have that authority. But everything that
23 exists today with respect to guidelines and rules and
24 regulations that establish our foundation are carried
25 forward under their jurisdiction effective July 1. So
26
1 all of that just transitions.
2 And then it's their job -- just like we
3 brought up the scheduling of statewide needs. They have
4 to begin to address that and establish a procedure to do
5 that. And when they do that, they more than likely
6 would review the basics, the standards, the assessments
7 and what goes into that. So I would think we would
8 carry over with what we have now. And they may be
9 tweaked, but I wouldn't think substantially for a while.
10 You would have the basics to work with until more
11 knowledge is gained and that sort of thing.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
13 a follow-up to the facility remedy. Is it anticipated
14 that JAC would make a clear distinction between new
15 construction and remodel, or is JAC developing options
16 for the districts to meet their needs?
17 SENATOR DEVIN: Well, as I understand
18 these two projects --
19 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: These are
20 immediate needs, so they need replaced.
21 SENATOR DEVIN: -- that they would be
22 making a decision on replacement, remodel. It could be
23 any of those options. But the remedy -- the charge to
24 them is with advice that they determine the remedy. And
25 that would be -- it could be any of those pieces. It
27
1 could be remodel.
2 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Colin, you just
3 said immediate needs means replace. I don't think
4 that's true. Immediate needs just means it be brought
5 up to standard. That's my impression.
6 MR. NELSON: Right.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: You can bring a
8 school up to standard without replacing it. Immediate
9 needs means you need to do something fairly quickly.
10 And I think when we started this process, we recognized
11 that getting the commission on board and up and running
12 would be a Herculean effort, and it would be a Herculean
13 effort with you guys.
14 And I would like to see full involvement in
15 all twelve of these projects, plus the first two.
16 Because even though the final decision on those I think
17 will go as JAC, just based on how it started, you
18 certainly need to understand the process. And hopefully
19 we can start that process and keep it going in the right
20 direction.
21 SENATOR DEVIN: Any other questions on
22 that piece?
23 MR. WARE: Madam Chair, we're starting
24 that process right now. I'm the only person here,
25 because of our schedules. But we're starting that right
28
1 now. Granted, we've got to run real fast between now
2 and October, November. But at least we're asking
3 questions formally and informally right now that are
4 being asked, and we're dialoguing and moving forward.
5 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chair, I
6 think the governor and the other parties certainly put
7 together a stellar group to do this. I was very excited
8 to see the names on there. And I think you're more than
9 capable of doing this. And I think you bring a lot more
10 knowledge to this than some of us have. So we're
11 certainly looking for your input, also, at this point.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
13 I'm sorry. On this facility remedy, it seems to me the
14 way this is written here in our agenda or the transition
15 process is singular. But it appears to me that it can
16 be -- they are options that are provided to the district
17 to correct -- to remedy the immediate needs of the
18 schools. And I think we need to be as clear as possible
19 in our minutes.
20 So if what we're intending is that the JAC in
21 the instance of Phase 1 hears MGT review an analysis
22 report, determines options that are acceptable to
23 JAC and then says to the district, these are the options
24 we find acceptable based on MGT recommendations, so here
25 are the options, we're not giving you a remedy, we're
29
1 giving you options to remediate your immediate needs --
2 and maybe that's a distinction without a difference, but
3 it seems to me that we need to be as clear as possible
4 in that.
5 SENATOR DEVIN: Mr. Nelson.
6 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, I think the
7 thinking was that the JAC would provide a remedy. Now,
8 that would go to the legislature. They may not agree
9 with that remedy in the piece of legislation that brings
10 it forward. But they would develop a recommendation
11 much as they did with Buffalo, much as they did with
12 Worland, that sort of process, where, based upon the
13 information and the advice they get from consultants,
14 they would forward their recommendation and funding for
15 that remedy. Then the legislature would do with it what
16 it must, and then that would be the final word.
17 So I didn't envision it as option. I mean, I
18 think the intent was that the state develops the remedy
19 based upon information.
20 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman?
21 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes, Senator Cathcart.
22 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman, in the
23 past, there's never been options offered. What's
24 occurred in the past is, we discussed the options. And
25 JAC typically has made the decision, do we remodel? Do
30
1 we rebuild new? And JAC has made that decision, that
2 recommendation. I assume as we get further into this
3 process, this commission will look at the options, and
4 they will make the decision on whether or not to build
5 new or to remodel. And in the past JAC has made those
6 decisions, which hopefully the commission is going to
7 start doing.
8 SENATOR DEVIN: The other item on our
9 organization for the interim, then, would be that,
10 officially the Select Committee on School Facilities, as
11 most of us served on in the past, actually brought the
12 legislation that passed last time and that formed what
13 we are now sitting here as the new Select Committee on
14 School Facilities. And that requires that we elect a
15 chair and a vice chair from that legislation. And so I
16 think that would be our next item of agenda.
17 For continuity, your co-chair's scheduled this
18 and continued and wanted to give you an overview of the
19 work process that you've got ahead of you. But if I
20 understand the legislation correctly, I think that this
21 committee now, as it's constituted, needs to elect a
22 chair and co-chair to go forward.
23 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Are nominations
24 open?
25 SENATOR DEVIN: Nominations are open.
31
1 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: I would nominate
2 Senator Irene Devin as chairman.
3 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I'll second
4 that.
5 SENATOR DEVIN: Further nominations?
6 (No response.)
7 SENATOR DEVIN: All those in favor of the
8 motion, aye.
9 (Members present voted aye.)
10 SENATOR DEVIN: Motion carries. Then we
11 have a vice chair that we need, which, frankly, I would
12 like to view far more as a co-chair, recognizing the
13 incredible need for co-chairs in this situation in order
14 to carry the load. So I will open the nominations for
15 co-chair.
16 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman, I
17 would nominate Bubba Shivler.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Second.
19 SENATOR DEVIN: There is a nomination and
20 second. Are there further nominations?
21 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Move the
22 nominations cease.
23 SENATOR DEVIN: Is there a second to
24 that?
25 SENATOR CATHCART: Second.
32
1 SENATOR DEVIN: All those in favor of the
2 motion, aye.
3 (Members present voted aye.)
4 SENATOR DEVIN: Those opposed.
5 (No response.)
6 SENATOR DEVIN: Mr. Co-chair, I really
7 would request the committee's permission to treat this
8 as a co-chair situation, because we found that when the
9 numbers of parties involved need to get ahold of one of
10 us to get a decision or a schedule started, it is so
11 much better if we can act in that manner than if they
12 have to reach one person.
13 Then I would like to go ahead and begin the
14 item on the MGT report piece so that we can move into
15 your report and get as much of that under way as
16 possible before we need to break for lunch.
17 And, Dodds, I think that -- I'm not sure.
18 Have you had an opportunity -- Lorna is new. We have
19 maybe one other new committee member that's not here.
20 Some of us have become more familiar with you in the
21 last year or two. But if you'd just give a little of
22 your background for our new committee member, I'd
23 appreciate that.
24 And we have -- in the absence of professional
25 staff, such as the water commission and the water
33
1 office, our own water engineer and facilitators, we have
2 contracted this kind of expertise and advice from
3 MGT and these representatives.
4 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, thank you.
5 MGT is a national consulting firm. And we work in the
6 public sector. Most of our work is in education. And I
7 work out of our Olympia, Washington office, which
8 specializes in focusing on educational facilities,
9 planning and assessing those facilities.
10 We work with school districts and state
11 agencies across the country. And actually, just
12 recently we've been doing some work internationally. We
13 just finished up a planning project for the American
14 Community School in Beirut, which was a rather exciting
15 post. But we've been working with the State of Wyoming
16 actually since 1994 for the Department of Ed.
17 We did the original condition assessment of
18 the state school buildings. In '97-'98 we did another
19 round of condition assessments. And that round has
20 become the basis for a lot of condition scores that are
21 now being used. And since '97-'98 we've updated the
22 condition scores on all the schools. We just finished
23 doing the last quarter about a month ago.
24 And so the Department of Ed's database is up
25 to date as far as condition scores, educational
34
1 suitability scores, technology readiness scores. And
2 they also have an accurate count on the number of
3 classrooms, science rooms, art rooms and that kind of
4 thing in every school in the state.
5 We've also been working -- we helped review
6 the first -- the first line of projects, and those
7 projects were given the go-ahead to go ahead and do a
8 schematic design of their proposals. And so we reviewed
9 each one of those projects for alignment with the state
10 standards.
11 We did a value engineering process on them.
12 We looked at them for safety and security, and we looked
13 at them for energy efficiency. And we took those
14 analyses and talked with the districts about changes
15 they could make and then brought those recommendations
16 to the JAC, along with those we developed, what we felt
17 were appropriate costs for those projects.
18 We've started to review the second set of
19 projects, Powell and Sheridan. And I'll just go ahead
20 and go into that. We spent a couple of days with each
21 of the districts and toured the facilities, quite a bit
22 more detail than we did today. We took a team of an
23 educator -- and Dave Teater is with me here today, who
24 is a consultant with MGT, is also an ex-superintendent
25 and principal. And he focuses in our firm on
35
1 educational suitability and enrollment projections and
2 that whole area.
3 But we took an engineer, and we took an
4 architect and as a team went and reviewed each of the --
5 reviewed the Powell High School facility, and we
6 reviewed the Sheridan Central Middle School facility,
7 met with the district, met with some board members, met
8 with some of the community people that were available,
9 talked about their proposed remedies, looked at their
10 numbers and analyzed those.
11 Then we took all that data, went back to our
12 offices as a team, added some more engineers where we
13 needed the technical expertise to do some analysis and
14 are in the process now of finalizing what our
15 recommendations will bring to you July 9th and 10th --
16 to the JAC July 9th and 10th.
17 I do have -- I would like to kind of talk
18 preliminarily where we are now. And I do have some
19 preliminary numbers. I'd rather not release those
20 numbers in hard copy, because I think in the next couple
21 of weeks, they may change a little bit. But I can give
22 you some conceptual numbers, if that's appropriate.
23 And I'll start with Powell High School.
24 Powell High School is essentially three buildings. It's
25 a classroom building. It's a gym building. And the
36
1 third building is a combination auditorium and
2 natatorium. All three buildings are the lowest score of
3 49 of immediate need, and so we reviewed all three
4 buildings.
5 The district had originally made a grant
6 proposal to build a new high school at a different site
7 about the same size as their existing facility. And
8 their existing facility is about 202,000 square feet.
9 And the auditorium, theirs is a large auditorium.
10 Obviously the natatorium is a significant building, and
11 the gym is a significant facility. It has two full-
12 sized gymnasiums in it. And the larger one has a pretty
13 good seating capacity.
14 We developed -- actually, we've looked at five
15 alternative remedies to this point. We looked at, of
16 course, their proposal, or their original grant
17 application. We looked at doing a new school more in
18 line with state standards. So their original proposal
19 was about -- was 194,000 square feet. So they were
20 shaving off about 6,000 square feet from their existing
21 facility. If we looked at a new school by state
22 standards, it would be more in the line of 110,000
23 square feet. A significant difference based on their
24 enrollment.
25 And we did enrollment projections there.
37
1 Their proposal was sized for a capacity of 636 students,
2 which is their last year's enrollment, plus 10 percent.
3 We did enrollment projections, and we felt they're
4 declining. And probably the highest they're going to be
5 for the next five years is 540 students. We talked to
6 them about any conditions in the community that might
7 have impact on that analysis. And generally they felt
8 there wasn't any big developments coming along that they
9 knew of for sure that were going to cause a growth
10 spurt.
11 They did make the point, though, that in the
12 past their enrollment has kind of gone like this. So
13 that's why they felt they needed to build a little
14 bigger facility.
15 So we looked at completely renovating the
16 existing buildings, building them up to a standard of
17 where they would not need anything but routine
18 maintenance. We looked at renovating the natatorium and
19 auditorium and then building a new classroom building
20 and gym building.
21 And the reason we looked at that option -- and
22 I think this -- Senator Baker mentioned earlier about
23 policy decisions that need to be made. And this will
24 touch on one of those policy decisions. If you look
25 just at a strict interpretation of the standards as they
38
1 are now, they would -- if you build a new school there,
2 you would build them a school, and you could put in an
3 auditorium. It wouldn't be the size that they have now.
4 And you wouldn't necessarily fund a natatorium.
5 So we felt that if you were going to build
6 something new, what happens to those existing buildings?
7 Does the district get to keep them and keep using them?
8 In other words, if we decided to build them a new high
9 school that doesn't have a natatorium, do they get to
10 keep that natatorium they have? Do they still receive
11 major maintenance payments for that? Would the remedy
12 necessarily have to renovate that?
13 That would go the same for the existing gym,
14 because they have a very good-sized gym, two full gyms.
15 They have tournaments there. It's used by the
16 community. What would happen to that facility if they
17 built a new school? Would they have to give it up? We
18 don't know. So we felt that it would be wise for them
19 to hang onto that natatorium-auditorium as an
20 educational resource and a community resource and
21 incorporate that into the solution.
22 They fought about that, and they came back
23 with their current proposal now, which is to renovate
24 the natatorium-auditorium and build a new classroom
25 gymnasium building on the same site. They were
39
1 proposing to tear down the existing gym, build a new
2 classroom gym building there while they're still using
3 their existing classroom building to -- so there's
4 really no significant disruption to the students.
5 Then once the new building is finished, they
6 would then tear down the existing classroom building,
7 and that would give them additional open space for
8 courts, tennis courts, that kind of thing, and parking
9 and just open space.
10 We took -- so we took those five remedies,
11 those five alternatives, and we've costed them out. And
12 for those of you who are on the JAC committee, if you
13 remember our spread sheet that we did, we developed a
14 formula for looking at costs based on the costs that we
15 were seeing around the state. And we're using that same
16 formula again.
17 Alternative Number 1, their original grant
18 proposal was about $30 million. A high school designed
19 to state standards would be about $19 million. A
20 complete renovation of the existing buildings where they
21 stand would be around 23 and a half million dollars.
22 One of the main issues that came up in looking
23 at renovating the facilities, one of the significant
24 cost issues that came up in renovating existing
25 facilities is bringing them up to current seismic codes.
40
1 We had engineering reports on two of the buildings, a
2 gymnasium and auditorium-natatorium, and costs were put
3 to those reports. But there was a great span in some of
4 the costs that were presented.
5 One report on the natatorium-auditorium said
6 that the upgrades could cost anywhere between two and
7 six million dollars. I mean, that was tough to sit down
8 and analyze. But bringing up the classroom building was
9 significant because, just the way it was built -- and
10 I'm not a structural engineer, and I won't even attempt
11 to try to talk about some of the issues there. But
12 there were a lot of issues in that building that would
13 take a significant effort to bring it up to current
14 seismic codes. So that's an issue -- that's a
15 significant cost factor in renovating older buildings.
16 We looked at the -- a new classroom gymnasium
17 building on a new site with a renovated auditorium-
18 natatorium on the existing place. And that was about
19 $21.6. And then we looked at the district's proposal to
20 build a new classroom gym building on the same site and
21 renovate the natatorium-auditorium. And that's coming
22 in at about 22.9 million.
23 The other thing that we also looked at was the
24 effect on major maintenance payments over 30 years.
25 What impact would each one of these alternatives have?
41
1 The first alternative would have a $12.7 million
2 increase in major maintenance payments over 30 years.
3 The second alternative, a state standard sized high
4 school would actually decrease major maintenance
5 payments to that district by about a million and a half
6 dollars over 30 years. That's assuming that they
7 weren't receiving major maintenance payments for any of
8 those existing facilities. This is where that kind of
9 policy issue comes into play.
10 The complete renovation major maintenance
11 payments would stay the same because the size of the
12 facilities haven't changed, except it's not clear to
13 me -- and I'm trying to get clarification on this now --
14 that the major maintenance payments are based on a value
15 of the building, existing buildings. And that value is
16 set at about $65 for buildings built before 1998.
17 MR. NELSON: '96.
18 MR. CROMWELL: '96. Buildings built
19 after '96, the value is established by the Department of
20 Ed as the actual cost or a reasonable cost.
21 So the value -- we used the value of $100 per
22 square foot for new buildings. If one completely
23 renovates a building, I don't know if that affects that
24 value or not. I don't know what the policy is there.
25 But that's a policy that needs to be looked at, the
42
1 thought being -- the theory behind the major maintenance
2 payments -- and I'll just visit that for a minute --
3 that they were established so that they would be
4 calculated based on a percentage of the value of a
5 building.
6 So a building -- you need to invest somewhere
7 between 2 and 4 percent of the value of a building in a
8 building every year to keep it well maintained. That's
9 why that value is kind of a significant factor.
10 The last two alternatives would both have a --
11 would decrease major maintenance payments by about
12 750,000 over 30 years. So it's not a big impact.
13 We are -- we are probably looking at
14 recommending what the district is proposing now, the
15 last alternative of building a new classroom gymnasium
16 building on the same site and renovating the
17 natatorium-auditorium. We've been in discussions with
18 the district and have talked with them, and they've been
19 talking with their community. And the community has
20 voiced a pretty strong opinion that they want that
21 school to stay downtown, centrally located, where it is
22 now.
23 SENATOR DEVIN: We have a question.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Dodds, just a
25 question quick on 4 and 5. I'm assuming those are also
43
1 built to the current state standards?
2 MR. CROMWELL: Yes. And let me say one
3 other thing, Madam Chairman. In all those new -- all
4 those alternatives where we put a new building in the
5 mix, we felt they should size that building with core
6 facilities that would accommodate 600 students but with
7 classroom facilities that would accommodate about 540
8 students so that if they do grow in the future, they've
9 got the core facilities there. They can add classrooms.
10 SENATOR CATHCART: Have you looked at
11 the -- on the district's proposal -- which sounds like
12 it could be your recommendation with further study --
13 how does the gross square foot per student come out?
14 How close is that going to be to the standard that we've
15 been working?
16 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, the new
17 facility would be based on the maximum -- our cost model
18 has been developed based on allowing 180 gross square
19 feet per student for that new facility. So that would
20 be the maximum that could be allowed. Currently the
21 policy -- Department of Ed policy is to allow each
22 district to have an auditorium that would seat the
23 entire enrollment of the largest high school in that
24 district. So their existing auditorium would meet that
25 need.
44
1 The natatorium is just out there as a facility
2 that the community has built and used and really doesn't
3 figure into the standard.
4 SENATOR CATHCART: Another question. You
5 talked about working to a number of 540 students. As I
6 recall looking at Powell, by the time the new building
7 could be built, enrollment data indicated about 515
8 students. Does this 540, is it something -- a number
9 that includes estimated enrollment, plus 10 percent?
10 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, no. It's
11 what we thought it would be over the next five years.
12 Based on our enrollment projections, that would be the
13 largest student body they would have.
14 SENATOR DEVIN: Questions?
15 SENATOR MASSIE: Madam Chairman, just
16 sort of a theoretical question with regard to this 180
17 square foot per student. Is this sufficient to provide
18 the basket of goods and services that's defined in our
19 law for our schools? I know that that came into
20 question, at least on the Senate side, during the
21 debates that we had over what we funded last session.
22 So it just raised a question in my mind whether the
23 maximum 180, whether that's sufficient or not.
24 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman. Senator
25 Massie, excellent question. We built a model -- model
45
1 program of a school for 539 students. And we sat down
2 with the Department of Ed and said, okay, what needs to
3 be in this school to deliver the basket of goods? How
4 many classrooms, how many science rooms, vocational
5 rooms, physical ed facilities?
6 And we allowed enough space in each one of
7 those categories for the number of students. We sized
8 that model for core of 600. We came down to the bottom
9 line -- added up all the square footage, came down to
10 the bottom line, divided it by 539. And we were about
11 168 gross square feet, which meant that we were well
12 within the guidelines and which meant that you had
13 about -- at the guidelines of 180 gross per student, you
14 had about another 6,000 square feet you could play with,
15 which would certainly accommodate or close to
16 accommodate a second gym or additional vocational space
17 or however they wanted to design it.
18 Under current policy, an auditorium would be
19 an addition to that 180 gross square feet. Currently
20 the policy is to allow 25 square feet per student for
21 that auditorium. And I feel that is sufficient.
22 The one issue that has kept coming up in every
23 school district we've been in is that -- and you're all
24 familiar with this. I'm not telling you anything new.
25 But I will repeat it because I have told the districts I
46
1 will come here and say this. High schools in Wyoming
2 are the centers of communities. They are not just a
3 place where children go to school. They are a place
4 where the community comes for community events. The
5 community uses the auditorium. The community uses the
6 gym. They have tournaments where teams from all over
7 the state come.
8 And so many of the districts feel that the
9 current guidelines really don't allow them the size of
10 facilities they need to support all that's going on in
11 the community.
12 Under the current law, however, they can fund
13 additional enhancements if they want with local funding
14 so that they have an alternative to that. I just share
15 that message with you because that's a message that I
16 keep hearing all over the state.
17 SENATOR MASSIE: Madam Chairman?
18 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
19 SENATOR MASSIE: As a follow-up, then, to
20 that, if I'm recalling correctly from what you're
21 saying, Mr. Cromwell, the present standards of the
22 Department of Education permits is to allow the largest
23 high school in that district to have an auditorium that
24 would seat all the students in that high school. In
25 your discussions, then, with these community
47
1 individuals, they're looking at something larger than
2 that? Do you have an idea generally about how much
3 larger than what the present standards would permit?
4 MR. CROMWELL: It varies from community
5 to community. But we've seen 1,000-seat auditoriums in
6 a couple of communities.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman?
8 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Dodds, I have
10 your prototypical high school that you did for us last
11 year that came in at 163. And what concerns me some
12 here is that, are we at 180 now or 160 for high school?
13 MR. CROMWELL: The maximum is between 160
14 and 180.
15 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: That's our
16 range. And this one came in at 168. And what's
17 concerning me here is that, again, you know, I know
18 these folks think that, in fact, the school is going to
19 grow. But the demographics aren't showing that.
20 Granted, they have done that through the years. But now
21 they're more or less doing this.
22 And I don't see -- I think possibly Hank and
23 Colin know more about what's happening in Powell than I
24 do. But just looking at the demographics, it doesn't
25 look like there's a great deal of growth there. Yet
48
1 we're throwing in an extra 6,000 feet. And if we lose
2 more, we significantly increase the size of that school
3 over the next few years.
4 I really like the concept of four facilities
5 being designed for 600 students, because that allows us
6 to do the expansion. And should they need that in the
7 future, it's available to them. And I think the state's
8 more than willing to pay for it.
9 But the thing that really concerns me, all the
10 districts are coming and saying, this is the center of
11 our community. And, you know, we really need these
12 larger facilities. And yes, several years ago, when
13 they had the bond for this, they didn't have that same
14 attitude. Now the state's paying for it. Sure, that's
15 a great way to go. But that wasn't the attitude ten
16 years ago.
17 In Teton County there was a great deal of
18 discussion about trying to overbuild the school. And I
19 think that's true across the state. Because, you know,
20 it meant higher taxes for the folks at home. And this
21 will do. They just don't see it directly.
22 So that concerns me a little that we are
23 actually -- we've gone through the same process in Teton
24 County. We have a competition grammar school now
25 because the city thought it would be nice. The school
49
1 district did that so they could have the intramurals.
2 The position I take, if the city wants a gym, build the
3 darn thing. But I don't think we're in the business of
4 building or should be in the business of building
5 recreational facilities for the towns. It's hard enough
6 to build the schools. We just don't have an adequate
7 supply of money. And there's more and more demands.
8 Irene and I went through this yesterday in the
9 education committee meeting. There's going to be more
10 and more demands on our money with the new requirements
11 that the feds are putting on us for data and also for
12 accountability. So there's just a lot happening at one
13 time here. And I think we really need to hold the line
14 as much as we can on construction. I'm not suggesting
15 we build inadequate schools. But I think we certainly
16 don't need to overbuild schools, either.
17 So that concerns me, the fact that the
18 community thinks it would be nice to have a community
19 center. And I agree with that. But still, at the same
20 time, I think that perhaps the community should chip in
21 for that.
22 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, I just
23 want to clarify. I think you understand that MGT is not
24 recommending that the state do that. We think the state
25 should build -- fund schools that are appropriate for
50
1 the size of student body that's there. And I've seen
2 lots of examples in other communities where agencies
3 will go together or communities will go together to fund
4 additional facilities. "Joint-use facilities" is a term
5 you hear a lot between parks departments and libraries
6 and that kind of thing. And I think that's a viable
7 alternative.
8 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: A question comes
9 up in my mind. And we're talking here -- there's two
10 reasons that this concerns me. The first one you just
11 brought up was about major maintenance payments possibly
12 skyrocketing, particularly on rebuild, renovated or new
13 schools, maintenance actually going up. The newer your
14 school is, the more maintenance you get, which is a
15 problem.
16 But one of the things about the renovation of
17 an auditorium, should we expect the state to renovate
18 over and above facilities -- facilities that are beyond
19 the standard, just because they're there, or should the
20 community be expected to renovate buildings that are
21 over and above the standards?
22 Let's divide -- and I graduated from Powell
23 High School. Let's divide the auditorium. You're not
24 going to -- and they're in the same -- the auditorium
25 and the natatorium are in the same building. I'm very
51
1 much aware of that. You divide the auditorium out and
2 say, we're only going to renovate from this seat
3 forward, it doesn't hardly work. You've got to renovate
4 the auditorium.
5 But the natatorium is visual. In it's own
6 way, it could be visual. Or even the way that school is
7 constructed, with a little bit of work, it could be
8 taken out. Oh, boy. The home town's proud of me now.
9 But, Madam Chairman, I think this is something
10 we should be discussing. Are we going to be talking
11 about 80, $100 a square foot to renovate an auditorium?
12 And apparently we're going to be talking significant
13 dollars. Is that a policy decision that we should be
14 making? It is nice to have that natatorium. But whose
15 responsibility is it? I think we ought to discuss that
16 sometime.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Is the
18 natatorium included in the square footage?
19 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, yes. It's
20 not included within the guideline square footage.
21 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: It's not included.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Why are you
23 including it? If you did adopt that proposal, why would
24 you do that?
25 MR. CROMWELL: It's a facility that the
52
1 school has been using for quite a while. I think they
2 will continue to use it. And we thought it was an
3 appropriate thing to renovate, bring up. So it would be
4 my understanding that since it's an educational
5 building, then it -- under current policy, it needs to
6 be renovated. It needs to be brought up to that
7 standard.
8 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman?
9 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: If you were
11 replacing, would you include it?
12 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, no.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
14 a follow-up. Are there significant structural problems
15 with the natatorium?
16 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, it doesn't
17 meet current seismic code. And there are some other
18 problems that aren't necessarily structural but commonly
19 seen in natatoriums. We've got a lot of moisture
20 damage. It's a concrete block building. And the
21 outside of that -- the outside of that concrete block in
22 some places is falling off, which is not necessarily
23 structural, but it's a major element.
24 But bringing it up to seismic code would be a
25 significant cost, at least two million and maybe six.
53
1 But if it was six, you'd probably want to just build a
2 new building.
3 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: That's the
4 difference in the 22.9 and the 19. Right? I'm
5 assuming. Your second one was a new school with 110,000
6 feet. And when we got down to the current proposal
7 unit, wasn't that twenty-two, nine?
8 MR. CROMWELL: Yes.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: And that's what
10 you're recommending. So what, two million of that is
11 the remodeling of the natatorium, or was that also
12 included in the 19 million? I missed that.
13 MR. CROMWELL: The second alternative did
14 not do anything to the existing natatorium.
15 SENATOR MASSIE: Madam Chairman, back to
16 the question of the 150 to 180 square feet per student.
17 It looks like it fits well with this size of high
18 school. What are your thoughts, Mr. Cromwell, with
19 regard to some of the smaller schools that we have in
20 the state? We may be facing that, I think, with perhaps
21 one of the Big Horn schools or maybe even all those. Is
22 that going to be adequate, do you think, for the smaller
23 schools, or is it too early to tell?
24 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, Senator
25 Massie, when we reviewed the first group of projects, we
54
1 did have a school that was a 100-student high school.
2 And we had a 300-student middle school. And we built
3 models for those. And the current state standards do
4 not work very well for smaller schools. So that gross
5 square foot per student does shoot up quite a bit. You
6 kind of have to build classrooms to house a maximum
7 class size. You just don't have the economies of scale.
8 My feeling would be that the Department of Ed
9 or the commission should look at typical school sizes in
10 the state. Three-fifths of all the schools in the state
11 are under 350 students. They should do something like
12 we've done in building these models that would be a
13 guideline for what's appropriate for a 50-student
14 elementary school or a 75-student middle school or so on
15 and so forth.
16 SENATOR MASSIE: Thanks.
17 SENATOR DEVIN: Go ahead, Senator
18 Cathcart.
19 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman, I
20 think, along with Senator Massie's questioning, when we
21 looked at Worland and Buffalo, Kaycee, last year, in
22 fact, you guys had done a model in some of those schools
23 because they were smaller, exceeded the standard by a
24 significant amount of gross square foot per student.
25 But reason prevailed there, and those were approved. I
55
1 would assume that the commission, or commission with
2 your help or the state department will do just exactly
3 what you recommend to models for certain size schools.
4 We've done that in the past.
5 MR. CROMWELL: Yes, we have.
6 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman?
7 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
8 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Mr. Cromwell,
9 I'm just wondering, if Powell fits the model almost
10 exactly at 540 students, why would you recommend the
11 high end of the range on square footage per student?
12 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, we wanted
13 to -- we wanted to err on the side of providing enough
14 space to give flexibility within the design so that --
15 it's kind of been our philosophy that setting standards,
16 we should say, okay, here's the maximum you can build
17 to. We're not going to tell you exactly what to build.
18 But here's the bottom line, that you've got to fit with
19 it. You might -- you could probably accuse us of being
20 too generous. I'm sure somebody -- some people would,
21 and some people would say, well, you could build it for
22 less space. And that's certainly something that could
23 be considered.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Haven't you just
25 ratcheted up the range fifteen points on each side?
56
1 Because if a school comes in that has 570 students and
2 you're going to give them 180 and they look at a school
3 like Powell, if they have 50 students more, I'm thinking
4 a lot more square footage. Or is it the economy of
5 scale that drives it back the other way?
6 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, within the
7 guidelines, it would increase the space. The breaking
8 point is somewhere around 400, 350 students, where the
9 guidelines tend to not -- tend to not work, tend to not
10 provide enough space to provide the program.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chair, in
12 follow-up to Colin's statement, you know, just looking
13 in our region -- and granted, there are some large high
14 schools in here. But what they recommend or what the
15 average is in our region, it's around 155 square feet,
16 our region being the surrounding states. It's 155
17 square feet. And you know, I agree. If you set the max
18 at 180, they're going to design to 182. If it's between
19 150 and 180, I would say let's try to design to 165.
20 And then if you can demonstrate that really we do need
21 180, then that would be another issue.
22 But I agree. Rather than hitting the high
23 side, I think we should try and hit the median between
24 the two. 6,000 is a lot of square footage. That's a
25 gymnasium for another school. And we're going to have
57
1 to build a lot of gymnasiums. So I think it's important
2 that we try to hit the middle here or the lower size,
3 rather than to maximize it. Because if it's going to be
4 100, you know, we know how that works.
5 MR. CROMWELL: We can prepare another
6 alternative that would follow that model.
7 SENATOR MASSIE: Thank you, Madam Chair.
8 And I certainly understand what the co-chair is saying,
9 and he makes a valid point. I think what still is
10 ringing in my ear is the discussion that occurred as the
11 bill for setting up the commission went through the
12 legislature and the discussion of the JAC
13 recommendations about the school that we looked at last
14 session.
15 And the concern among a lot of folks is that
16 we do take into account local thoughts on this, that
17 there is some flexibility, that locals feel that it's
18 not the state simply saying, okay, because we have to
19 pay the price tag on this thing, this is what you're
20 going to get, period.
21 So I appreciate the fact that flexibility is
22 being offered here. And I think that as this committee
23 and the legislature, as well as the commission, sets
24 policies, that it's important to allow that flexibility
25 for local input and some local needs in there.
58
1 I understand the fiscal realities of the
2 situation, too, especially since we really haven't
3 defined the permanent source of funding for this capital
4 construction we're going to undergo in the next decade.
5 But I also feel strongly about the flexibility, and I
6 hope that we can find a fine line between the fiscal
7 reality and allowing that flexibility of a local
8 community.
9 SENATOR DEVIN: We did have -- we were
10 looking at breaking. I have some people who need to
11 have some noon arrangements. Yesterday, because we need
12 to go downtown and get back, we allowed an hour and a
13 half. We found we can make it in an hour and fifteen
14 minutes. So I'm going to ask that, given the time
15 schedule of having time to discuss with MGT, that we try
16 to take the hour and fifteen minutes today and be back
17 to reconvene. Otherwise they are going to have to leave
18 for the Billings airport, and we're going to get cut
19 short.
20 (Hearing proceedings recessed from 12:35
21 p.m. to 1:53 p.m.)
22 SENATOR DEVIN: I'd like to go ahead and
23 call our meeting to order, because we do have limited
24 time to cover some of these while our consultants are
25 still here. Mr. Cromwell, would you like to continue?
59
1 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, thank you.
2 If we're finished discussing Powell, I'll move on to
3 Sheridan.
4 SENATOR DEVIN: Okay. Now, there has
5 been some discussion by the committee about the square
6 footage option and whether you wish to see a sixth
7 option offered with less than 180 square feet or if you
8 not. And I guess that's the direction that I think you
9 need to say yea or nay on, if you want to see that
10 option out there.
11 Representative Simpson.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: I would like to
13 see an option on the 168 square foot per student, if
14 that's what came out of the model, so at least the
15 JAC would have a chance to see those numbers and
16 consider that.
17 SENATOR DEVIN: Before we leave this
18 subject at this point, is there any other request that
19 you have or any other -- just as we left, you've raised
20 the issue of the nat -- the swimming pool. I will never
21 get "natatorium" quite right. Any direction on that or
22 just future discussion?
23 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman, just a
24 question on that. The amount of money figured into a
25 budget for whatever the -- whatever we do at the
60
1 natatorium, can that be like separate from the 165 gross
2 square feet number? Are we going to be able to
3 differentiate?
4 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, yes.
5 SENATOR DEVIN: Let's move on to the next
6 project, then, so we can hear as much as we can.
7 MR. CROMWELL: We went through the same
8 process with Sheridan. And all of you have toured the
9 facilities. And I think everybody understands what
10 they're proposing. And I'll just repeat it real
11 quickly.
12 They're proposing to close their middle school
13 and sell that property and then demolish the junior high
14 and build a new middle school that would house sixth,
15 seventh and eighth grades and take the ninth-graders,
16 who are now at the junior high, and put them over at the
17 high school. So they would add a classroom wing for
18 those students over at the high school.
19 The administration is on the third floor of
20 the existing junior high building. They would move into
21 the voc ed building on that campus. So that would be
22 renovated. Their alternative schools are located in
23 leased property. They would move into that early
24 building, which has a gym -- a pool and an auditorium
25 and some classrooms. They would build a new ag facility
61
1 at the high school, because the current ag facility is
2 at the existing junior high.
3 We looked at three alternatives here.
4 Basically the one proposed by the district, which was
5 based on 834 students. And then we looked at one that
6 was based on a core facility for 800 students with
7 classrooms for 775 students, using the maximum state
8 guidelines. And then we looked at a third alternative
9 of just renovating the middle school and renovating the
10 junior high.
11 We're probably going to end up recommending
12 the second alternative, which is essentially what the
13 district would like to do. But the numbers are smaller
14 and more in line with state guidelines. We feel that
15 the cost to renovate those buildings is significant and
16 not a good investment for the state and that the
17 outcome, as far as educational suitability, would not be
18 acceptable. We really think it's important that they go
19 to a middle school and that they get their ninth-graders
20 in the high school with the high school program.
21 In the way of numbers, the costs for the first
22 alternative that the district originally proposed was
23 about 24.5 million. The cost -- if we take that same
24 alternative, the middle school -- I'm sorry. Let me
25 back up. That first alternative would have created a
62
1 middle school of about 136,800 square feet. If we
2 downsize that, using the lower enrollment and keeping it
3 within the guidelines of 120 to 150 gross square feet
4 per student, we'd end up with a facility of 120,000
5 gross square feet.
6 They had proposed a classroom addition at the
7 high school of almost 12,000 gross square feet. And we
8 thought that was small. We didn't think that would
9 work, really, for them. Our model, we sized that at
10 14,500. So we actually added a little square footage
11 there over their proposal.
12 They proposed an ag facility at the high
13 school of 11,000 gross square feet. We feel a facility
14 of 8,000 gross square feet would be suitable. Then both
15 alternatives, I included renovating the vocational
16 building to house the administration, and both included
17 costs for demolishing the junior high building.
18 So the second guideline alternative comes in
19 at about 22.2 million. Then we have calculated what the
20 cost would be to renovate the middle school and the
21 junior high. And those come in at about a total of 22.9
22 million. Again, there's a significant cost associated
23 with seismic upgrades and asbestos and all the other
24 issues that are going on there.
25 And again, I'd reiterate that we don't think
63
1 that would be a cost-effective way to get an
2 educationally suitable and appropriate building for the
3 children.
4 The 30-year impact on major maintenance
5 payments for the district's proposed alternative would
6 be about 3.7 million. For the guideline proposal, it
7 would be about 2.4 million. And again, I'll reiterate
8 that even though they're decreasing their total gross
9 square footage because the payments are based on this
10 higher building value, we seem to get an increase in the
11 major maintenance. That's pretty much the sum total of
12 Sheridan, unless there's questions.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Would you
14 clarify something for me, please, Dodds? On the high
15 school addition, I'm assuming that's for the ninth
16 grade?
17 MR. CROMWELL: Yes.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Their suggestion
19 is 11,000 square feet, and yours is fourteen, five?
20 MR. CROMWELL: Yes.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: How many
22 students is that?
23 MR. CROMWELL: 264.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Thank you.
25 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Two?
64
1 SENATOR DEVIN: 264.
2 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: 264? Okay.
3 MR. CROMWELL: That addition is ten
4 classrooms, essentially, plus the hallway space, you
5 know, auxiliary space.
6 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman?
7 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
8 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Dodds, you
9 mentioned that a classroom of 775, using maximum square
10 foot. Is that 150?
11 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chairman, yes.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
13 may I follow up on that a little bit?
14 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
15 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Along the same
16 lines as my questions on the -- what is the model that
17 fits for this middle school, in terms of, how does it
18 fit into the prototypical middle school of this size?
19 Well, to get the range of 120 to 150, the model is based
20 on student number -- what student number?
21 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair,
22 Representative Simpson, those ranges were established by
23 looking at state guidelines in this region and then
24 adding -- I'm going to get this wrong, because the
25 Department of Ed -- they looked at averages in other
65
1 states, and then I think they added 10 percent and
2 rounded up to get that 120 to 150.
3 It wasn't based on a specific model. At 800
4 or 700 students, you've got the economy of scale that
5 it's going to work, given those ranges. We see it work
6 all over the country, those sizes. There's just no
7 question to my mind that you can provide good school
8 facilities in that range at that size of school.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I'm sorry. I
10 didn't understand that. In what range?
11 MR. CROMWELL: 120 to 150 gross square
12 foot per student.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: You can't
14 provide that?
15 MR. CROMWELL: You can.
16 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Oh, you can.
17 Madam Chair, again, we're back to what we were talking
18 about a while ago. We might as well do away with the
19 range. Every time we hit the max. I mean, why do we
20 have 150 to 180 and 120 to 150 if we're always going to
21 hit 180 and always hit 150?
22 My thinking is, if we're going to have that
23 range, possibly we should start out in the middle, like
24 shoot for 135. And then we still don't know what's
25 going to happen with vocational ed.
66
1 And if, in fact, they need a new vocational ed
2 building, it still allows them extra square footage that
3 they could have in addition and still fall within the
4 guidelines, whereas if we hit the maximum every time,
5 they don't have any additional square footage. And then
6 they're coming to us and saying, gosh, we need a voc ed.
7 We didn't know what we were going to do at that point.
8 And I think we need to be a little proactive
9 here and allow for that expansion that may come. We
10 don't know what it is. But if, in fact, voc ed becomes
11 an issue -- and it is already. We're doing a study. I
12 think we need to allow some expansion for that.
13 So I'd be a lot more comfortable if we're in
14 the middle, around 135, than 150 square feet per child.
15 And that certainly falls within the guidelines of the
16 region. The region is 134.
17 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman, I
18 want to follow a little bit, probably because I've got
19 too much history. I remember too many things. When
20 we're looking at building a high school in Lander for
21 about $24 million, and it services around 700 students,
22 we're looking at the same ballpark as a middle school
23 here in Sheridan at 22. I mean, we're talking at least
24 30 gross square foot difference in the standards and
25 only two years of time delay between the two.
67
1 Intuitively I think that the figures should be
2 farther apart, but yet they end up being -- if you look
3 at this, Powell High School is going to cost 22. Here's
4 23. Lander was 24. And we're dealing with 500 to 800
5 students. It's quite a variation. Quite a range,
6 actually. And the majority of these are high schools,
7 and yet this is a junior high. Shouldn't this junior
8 high be coming in below this level, or are these other
9 additions, like the high school and the ag, raising it
10 that much?
11 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair,
12 Representative Baker, the middle school -- the cost for
13 just building that 120,000 square foot middle school is
14 about 17.5 million. So we're getting up to 22 by adding
15 in the classroom addition to the high school, by doing
16 the ag facility at the high school, by remodeling the
17 vocational building to house the administration and by
18 demolishing the junior high.
19 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman, I
20 would point out that demolition was also figured into
21 the Lander, the Johnson County School Districts. They
22 had significant site costs, which involved football
23 fields and those kinds of things. This junior high
24 shouldn't. I mean, they should more than make up
25 for, it seems like to me, that variation. I mean, I'm
68
1 just having -- we'll need to talk a little further. We
2 will.
3 SENATOR DEVIN: Senator Cathcart.
4 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman, I'm
5 looking at the middle recommendation here, the 22.2
6 million for 775 students. Was that the right amount?
7 MR. CROMWELL: (Nods head.)
8 SENATOR CATHCART: Your recommendation
9 was for 120,000 square feet. And if you divide that
10 out, that comes to more than 150 square feet. Why is
11 that?
12 MR. CROMWELL: May have used 800. Did
13 you divide it by 775 or 800?
14 SENATOR CATHCART: 775. If you take
15 120,000 square feet divided by 775, you come up with 155
16 square feet.
17 MR. CROMWELL: We used 800.
18 SENATOR CATHCART: You used 800 for a
19 number?
20 MR. CROMWELL: (Nods head.)
21 SENATOR CATHCART: Then apparently if you
22 divide the 22.2 million by 120,000 square feet, we come
23 up with $185 a square foot cost.
24 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, the 22
25 million includes 120,000 square feet of middle school,
69
1 fourteen thousand --
2 SENATOR CATHCART: What are you using for
3 square foot cost?
4 MR. CROMWELL: $90.
5 SENATOR CATHCART: $90. Okay.
6 MR. CROMWELL: It's the spread foot.
7 Madam Chair, it's $90 building costs. And then using
8 our model, we add in site costs, contingency
9 installation.
10 SENATOR DEVIN: Senator Massie.
11 SENATOR MASSIE: Thank you, Madam
12 Chairman. A couple questions. First one, going back to
13 Powell, if I remember correctly, when you applied --
14 Mr. Cromwell, when you applied the state standards and
15 you came out to 169 square foot per student, you used
16 the flexibility to bump it up to 180, if I remember
17 those figures correctly.
18 What was your calculation for the Sheridan
19 Middle School for building a new one there when you
20 apply that formula? Did you come up to 150 at that
21 point, or were you rounding up to that, as well?
22 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, Senator
23 Massie, at Sheridan we didn't build a model, because we
24 know from past experience that when you get up to 800,
25 700 students, that you're going to fit within those
70
1 ranges. So we just went to the top end of the range,
2 again being generous.
3 SENATOR MASSIE: As a follow-up,
4 Madam Chairman, to that point and then another question
5 at some point -- and if we need to stay at this point,
6 that's fine. But I think that that sounds logical. And
7 I think what we need to be careful of is that if we have
8 experts saying that this is what's going to provide the
9 basket of goods and services and we go lower, for
10 whatever reason, then we may have a difficult time
11 defending that.
12 So I'm thinking that that's something that
13 holds a great deal of weight if that, indeed, is the
14 square footage that's being recommended, to say that
15 it's going to deliver the basket. If there's going to
16 be other figures used, then there's also a burden there
17 on those different figures to say that that would also
18 deliver the basket. So as we kick around different
19 figures, I think we need to keep that in the back of our
20 mind.
21 SENATOR CATHCART: On the same subject,
22 then, I heard a comment you made earlier that indicated
23 that you were very comfortable that anywhere in the
24 country, in the range of 120 to 150 square feet, you
25 could build an adequate facility for 800 students. And
71
1 so I guess, as our expert, I would ask you, can you
2 build an adequate facility with 135 square feet for 800
3 students? Is that adequate?
4 MR. CROMWELL: Mr. Chairman, I believe
5 so, yes.
6 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Next question,
7 would we be able to serve the basket of goods within the
8 135 square feet? In other words, it would be adequate,
9 and we could -- actually, 120 would be adequate,
10 wouldn't it? I mean, that's our range. And when you
11 get to 800, you're getting toward the end of -- you
12 know, that's a large group.
13 And I'm not suggesting 120. I would just like
14 to kind of hit the middle so that in the event they do
15 need some expansion with the same ADM, with the same
16 number of students, they have that ability without going
17 over. And that gives them a little latitude in case
18 they need a new building in a couple years. I just
19 think the middle is a better place to hit it, provided
20 as Mike said, we can provide the basket of goods. And I
21 believe we can with 135 square feet.
22 MR. CROMWELL: And, Mr. Chairman, I am
23 certainly willing to -- we've done this in the past with
24 the schools, the smaller enrollments. But to sit
25 down -- we've sat down with the Department of Ed people,
72
1 their curriculum people, and we would build up those
2 models so we're sure we would be able to provide that.
3 And if we need to do that for this exercise, we'll do
4 that.
5 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: My
6 understanding -- and I hope I'm clear on this -- that
7 the reason we have the range is because of the
8 difference in the size of our schools. In other words,
9 the 150 would go towards a smaller middle school, and
10 the 120 would go toward a larger one. And that way it
11 gives us a range of design. And, you know, certainly
12 the 800 is a larger one. So I think we could at least
13 go middle ground.
14 Mr. Baker.
15 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Mr. Chairman --
16 well, my train left town. I don't know where my train
17 of thought went.
18 SENATOR MASSIE: I got a question while
19 he's thinking.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Senator Massie.
21 SENATOR MASSIE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 A little bit different subject. With the design that
23 you're proposing, I think -- is it along the same lines
24 as what you were proposing for Powell? And that is sort
25 of some core facilities that would handle these larger
73
1 number of students in case the population grows.
2 I am particularly thinking about what
3 Representative Burns had said earlier. And that is if,
4 indeed, there is coal development, coal methane
5 development in the Tongue River Basin here, that could
6 have resulted fairly quickly in a larger population of
7 students for Sheridan. And I'm wondering just how
8 flexible the design would be to accommodate that in case
9 there had to be some additions to the school to
10 accommodate those students.
11 MR. CROMWELL: Mr. Chair, the -- I really
12 think that's a very feasible thing to accomplish, if
13 that's -- if the designers know that in advance when
14 they start the design process, that they need to be able
15 to have a design that can accommodate future growth,
16 addition of classrooms. It's done all the time.
17 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: I captured my
18 train, sir. I was so astounded by your comments,
19 Mr. Chairman, that you derailed me for a second.
20 As you're building these models, these models
21 roll up to a released figure for a released amount of
22 money to a district, or an amount that is going to be
23 released as construction proceeds. And they're based
24 upon classroom configurations in a certain way. That's
25 how you build your model.
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1 Is there anything that requires the
2 architectural and engineering firms that then develop
3 the actual plans to deliver what we are asking? The
4 delivery of the basket of goods is supposed to be our
5 point. Should we retain oversight -- you're advising
6 us. Should we retain oversight of that plan and the
7 proposals and the working? Should we be involved in
8 that between the board's architectural and engineering
9 firms to come up with a plan and make sure that it
10 delivers the basket of goods?
11 Or is that enough of your review process as
12 you look at those plans that you're comfortable with
13 releasing the money to the district, and they can draw
14 up their own plans and then they begin there?
15 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, I haven't
16 seen an example of a district that hasn't done its best
17 in designing the school -- to design a school that would
18 fit their educational needs. Having said that, there
19 could always be a situation where a district does
20 something misguided. I don't see that happening.
21 But we review -- in the last group of
22 projects, we reviewed the schematic design documents,
23 and at that point the design's pretty well set. There's
24 clearly a direction they're going with that project.
25 And I thought that was a worthwhile process. And I
75
1 think that would ensure that those designs were capable
2 of delivering the basket of goods. I wouldn't say that
3 you shouldn't take a look at that final design. But I
4 think that certainly staff or consultants or the
5 commission staff could certainly handle that.
6 SENATOR DEVIN: Representative Simpson.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman.
8 Dodds, if you are advising this committee or the
9 commission as to where we should come down on square
10 footage per student, say for Sheridan Middle School, for
11 instance, and there is this range, and then there is the
12 size of the school, I mean, are you telling us that we
13 need to come down at 150 a square foot? And if so, why?
14 I'm still trying to get a handle on this range
15 and why you're at the top of the range on both of these
16 schools. Because to me -- it doesn't make sense to me
17 that that's the case. And you put us in a position
18 where we can't back down from that range if our expert
19 is telling us, this is what we recommend.
20 So in my opinion, you're to tell us in an
21 unbiased fashion, without bowing to pressure from the
22 districts, what your professional opinion is, so then we
23 can determine and we can maybe judge those social and
24 cultural things that are going on in Wyoming where we
25 might want to come down somewhere differently in the
76
1 range. Do you see where I'm headed? Do you leave us
2 any room to work when you're at the top of the range?
3 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair.
4 Representative Simpson, I think you make a very good
5 point. And we were trying to make a recommendation that
6 gave the most flexibility to the design. But it does
7 back you up into a corner, so to speak. And I certainly
8 think that a school of this many students could be -- an
9 appropriate school could be designed in less than the
10 maximum of the range.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: How does it give
12 flexibility to the design by giving the high end of the
13 range? They have more square footage to work with
14 within their design parameter. Right?
15 MR. CROMWELL: Uh-huh.
16 SENATOR DEVIN: Representative Burns, did
17 you have a comment you wanted to make?
18 REPRESENTATIVE BURNS: Yes. Thank you,
19 Madam Chairman. If I could ask just one question. I'm
20 a little confused here. It was an adjunct to a question
21 Representative Baker asked. It's about demolition costs
22 and so forth. In the MGT, from the explanation I heard,
23 the MGT proposal includes the cost for demolition of the
24 junior high school. Does it include demolition costs
25 for Central Middle School? And if not, why not?
77
1 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, it doesn't --
2 the district presented to us that they would sell that
3 property off and that the proceeds from the sale of the
4 property cover the demolition costs if, in fact, they
5 had to demolish it. There was some question -- they've
6 been advised that the property would probably be more
7 valuable or more sellable if the building was
8 demolished. But that wasn't a necessity of the
9 proposal.
10 REPRESENTATIVE BURNS: Madam Chair, as
11 just a follow-up on that, if I could. After the
12 presentation and tour we had this morning, it seems
13 there might be -- it might be the chance that it would
14 cost more to demolish that building than the property is
15 worth. So I'm wondering what position that leaves the
16 district in.
17 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, we did not
18 look at evaluation of the property. So I really
19 couldn't speak to that.
20 SENATOR DEVIN: Other questions?
21 (No response.)
22 SENATOR DEVIN: Let's move on, then. I
23 guess we have district facility planning process and
24 immediate needs review we'd like to do before you need
25 to leave. Are there any other burning comments that
78
1 need to be made at this point in time before we proceed
2 on by anyone?
3 Yes.
4 MR. DOUGHERTY: Madam Chair, if I could
5 make a brief comment about the issue of the square
6 footage per the student. When we looked at, albeit
7 Ms. Spriggs and myself and my assistant, looking at the
8 square footage, we looked at the program delivery. And
9 the comment was made that -- our district was looking at
10 program development. And our middle school concept, we
11 have said number of teachers that have so many planning
12 periods. They teach so many classes. And then that's
13 how we develop our program.
14 So we looked at the program first, versus the
15 ADM issue. And so if you just look at ADM issues and
16 square footage issues, you might come up with a, well,
17 you can build this for 108,000 square feet because
18 you've got this many kids and this many teachers.
19 So we looked at programmatically, i.e., a
20 middle school concept, just as you were to look at an
21 elementary school. We have very small class sizes in
22 Sheridan. We do that programmatically because we
23 require our teachers to take running records of every,
24 single child and also what we call in math recovery, a
25 math record of every, single child.
79
1 So we want our elementary teachers to have
2 very small numbers. And sometimes we end up with
3 classes of fourteen in a classroom. Well, on paper,
4 looking at that, that would mean that we have a lot of
5 teachers per student. But programmatically we drive
6 that because we have the expectation of then believing
7 that we have the results to bear that out.
8 So when you're looking at square footage and
9 teacher, we put the numbers to MGT. And our numbers
10 were lower at the high school. They had higher numbers.
11 At the middle school, we had 136,000. But that was
12 driving it programmatically. And that's certainly
13 something that we would work with the JAC or your
14 committee or MGT in looking at that. But that does
15 drive our thinking.
16 SENATOR DEVIN: Let's move on to the
17 district facility planning process, then.
18 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair?
19 SENATOR DEVIN: And if you recall in the
20 legislation, this is something that is required for all
21 of the districts. And we put a fair amount of money
22 into that bill to get this process jump-started and
23 under way, because we know that renovation and
24 construction projects coming down the line are going to
25 have -- there should be a good deal of bearing on the
80
1 districtwide plan as to what we look at.
2 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, as you said,
3 the legislation requires that every district file a
4 five-year facility master plan by July 1, 2003. And so
5 we've begun a process to develop the guidelines for
6 those master plans. And we've chosen a steering
7 committee made up of two superintendents, two
8 business -- school business officers and two facility
9 directors to guide us in developing those guidelines.
10 We kicked off that process yesterday in Casper
11 with our first meeting. We've done some research into
12 other states and other entities' master plan guidelines
13 so that we do not have to recreate the wheel from the
14 beginning.
15 We'll be developing guidelines or what needs
16 to be put in those master plans for the districts.
17 We'll be developing the rules to administer those
18 guidelines. And we'll be developing the funding formula
19 for how much each district would receive to pay
20 professionals or whoever to develop those master plans.
21 One of the main goals -- any entity that has a
22 number of facilities under their purview really should
23 have a facility master plan, whether it be five or ten
24 years. It can vary. But you should have a long-range
25 plan that looks at your facilities, and what are your
81
1 facility needs over long term? What are your major
2 maintenance needs? When are you going to need to do
3 what? And what kind of budgets are you going to need
4 annually? And that certainly applies to any school
5 district. That's an important thing.
6 In addition to that, we feel that one of the
7 major goals of these master plans is to, over the next
8 five years, look at, what are the needs of all the
9 districts in order to get the facilities up to the
10 standards that have been set by the Supreme Court
11 ruling? So we feel that this -- these plans should lay
12 out year by year what needs to happen as far as capital
13 improvement -- capital improvements or major maintenance
14 goes. So that's going to be one of our aims in
15 developing these guidelines unless we're directed
16 otherwise.
17 As I said, we had a good meeting yesterday
18 with our steering committee. We talked about a lot of
19 issues. There were some very interesting issues that
20 came up. Clearly, one was that we didn't want to create
21 a monster that was just a pile of paper that districts
22 had to develop at a time when they've got enough
23 paperwork going on, especially when we've got a lot of
24 districts where there may be a superintendent and a
25 business officer and a part-time secretary. And we're
82
1 asking them to develop this report and update it
2 annually. So we need to keep that in mind.
3 We talked about enrollment projections. We
4 had to keep in mind that you can't just do enrollment
5 projections for a district as a whole a lot of times,
6 because some districts are made up of separate
7 communities that are individual entities in and among
8 themselves. So we need to take those kind of
9 considerations into mind.
10 We're going to be developing the guidelines
11 over the next couple, three weeks. We're going to meet
12 back with our committee. And I should also include that
13 the committee includes the Department of Ed, Bruce Hayes
14 from the Department of Ed. And I've invited the new
15 commission director and the commissioners to join us at
16 any time during our meetings. So they'll be involved
17 because they'll be administering this process.
18 We'll be developing the guidelines. We'll
19 meet again with the committee, go over it with them, see
20 how they think it's appropriate. And then we've asked
21 and been accepted by Sheridan to go out and do a sample
22 master plan, using their district and their data.
23 We'll prepare that sample master plan, take it
24 back to the committee, once again, tweak, adjust,
25 whatever we need to do on those guidelines, finalize
83
1 them. Then we're going to have two public workshops --
2 right now we're proposing to do one in Casper and one in
3 Riverton -- to share to all school people who are
4 interested and who have a stake in this process what the
5 guidelines look like and what's going to be required.
6 And depending on the feedback we get, if we
7 need to tweak those again, we will, and then finalize
8 them and publish them. And our goal is to have this
9 whole process done by the end of September. That will
10 give almost nine months for the districts then to turn
11 around and take those guidelines and prepare the master
12 plans and turn them in. This first time, I would say
13 that the commission is probably going to receive 48
14 master plans all at once on July 1.
15 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: June 30th.
16 MR. CROMWELL: And the legislation calls
17 for those to be updated annually. And I'm sure there
18 will be some tweaking to do every year in what's
19 required. They'll get improved.
20 We talked a little bit about maybe -- for the
21 district's sake, maybe moving that annual deadline,
22 trying to move it up earlier into the springtime, so it
23 doesn't back up against other things that they're trying
24 to do in July. But those kinds of things can be worked
25 out and tweaked over time.
84
1 I'm really excited about this. I think this
2 is a neat planning tool. I think it offers the state a
3 really good way to get their arms around the situation
4 and to really do some long-range planning around
5 facilities and facility needs to ensure that you've got
6 good facilities out there and that you know how much you
7 need to spend every year to keep them -- you know, once
8 you've got them to this level, then it will be much
9 easier then every year to just update those plans and
10 keep your facilities in good shape.
11 SENATOR DEVIN: Any questions on that
12 process?
13 (No response.)
14 SENATOR DEVIN: Then we have immediate
15 needs review next.
16 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, you talked a
17 little earlier about the twelve buildings that have been
18 identified as the next group of immediate needs. And I
19 understand there was some discussion about how to
20 proceed on that. We've submitted a proposal, and we're
21 ready to proceed on looking at those buildings and
22 working with the districts and to recommend remedies to
23 the -- to whatever body is appropriate, the commission
24 or the JAC, by mid August.
25 Then those districts would get planning monies
85
1 released so that they could design their schematic
2 design by November 1st. We could review those schematic
3 designs by December so that we could make
4 recommendations to the appropriate body in December for
5 what should be funded as far as those remedies.
6 That's a really, really aggressive schedule.
7 And I understand if people -- if people have concerns
8 about the way that's laid out, that's fine. I am
9 scheduled next week to be in Big Horn 1, Big Horn 4 and
10 Park to look at their buildings. So if we're proceeding
11 incorrectly or not appropriately as far as the
12 committee, I'd really appreciate some guidance there.
13 SENATOR DEVIN: Representative Baker.
14 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: I'm sorry. Were
15 you -- is this a good place to break in?
16 MR. CROMWELL: Yes.
17 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman, I
18 really think that we need to look at particularly the
19 two districts here that are on top, Big Horn 1 -- and by
20 the way, the Hyattville Elementary is not in Big Horn 1.
21 It's in Big Horn 4.
22 MR. CROMWELL: That's right.
23 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: And I've already
24 pointed out some of the concerns that I have about Big
25 Horn 1. For members of the committee, Cowley is a town
86
1 of somewhere around 240, 250 people. Its next closest
2 neighbor is Lovell, which is not in the same district.
3 Lovell is having a significant decline in population.
4 They have room in their elementary buildings. We're
5 talking five miles, five miles to Lovell.
6 Should -- this is a fundamental question.
7 Should we be asking them to come up with a remediation
8 plan for a building that, in fact, we may decide there
9 is no significant need for? Five miles is not terribly
10 far to haul even elementary students.
11 Next thing is the red brick building in
12 Southeast Junior High, Junior-Senior High, the red brick
13 building, as far as I know, that has no students in it
14 at all. Am I mistaken?
15 SENATOR CATHCART: That's at Yoder.
16 SENATOR DEVIN: Which one are you
17 speaking of?
18 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: That's the third
19 one down at Goshen. Is it in use?
20 SENATOR CATHCART: I don't know.
21 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, I'm looking
22 right now as to what is designated as -- I believe -- I
23 have also thought that, because there was one in Crook
24 County that had a similar designation. But I believe
25 there is something there. And I will look that up.
87
1 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, if I may.
2 There was a red brick school or a red schoolhouse --
3 MR. NELSON: In Crook County.
4 MR. CROMWELL: -- that originally was on
5 the list that we did take off.
6 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: It was in Goshen
7 County, too, the red school.
8 MR. CROMWELL: I'm not sure.
9 SENATOR DEVIN: I guess I would like --
10 appreciate a real careful look at that and maybe a
11 historical look. Because I had some concerns from
12 citizens that when some of that review was done,
13 buildings that had been used for storage for some time,
14 like yours, had been cleaned out and asked to be
15 assessed as classrooms or student facilities. And, in
16 fact, the population did not demand that, nor had the
17 use historically been that. But when the assessment of
18 buildings took place, the storage stuff was moved out,
19 and they were asked to be assessed in the value as
20 though they were for students.
21 So I don't know if you have the ability to
22 look at that. But I think that's something that
23 would -- would be something the committee needs to
24 consider, whether those citizens' concerns -- and I
25 don't know if it's this building. But the description
88
1 sounds similar. And if, in fact, it's needed in the
2 district to continue the program, I have no knowledge of
3 it. I just -- it was brought to my attention. So I
4 have to think that's a part of what we would appreciate
5 as the assessment.
6 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman, as
7 you look at these things -- and I know all of us are not
8 intimately aware of everything that is going on in these
9 districts. It seems like, to me, that MGT, our experts,
10 should be advised as to -- okay, Byron Elementary, Rocky
11 Mountain Middle School and the high school and the
12 economic building are all within seven miles of each
13 other, all within, as I've said earlier, no more than
14 fifteen miles from existing school facilities that are
15 in shape and are -- and have room in them.
16 Philosophically, how can we advise them -- how
17 can we -- how can we help them? Or should we just let
18 them go ahead and make their recommendations, and then
19 we say this is feasible and this isn't, and this is
20 appropriate and this isn't? Should we sort it out after
21 the fact or before the fact?
22 SENATOR DEVIN: Senator Cathcart.
23 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman, I
24 think there's a lot of merit in the things that Mike's
25 talking about here. But we're getting into a whole
89
1 different issue of, let's say, force consolidation when
2 you talk about Cowley going to Lovell for schools,
3 sending those kids there. Are we going to force them to
4 consolidate with Lovell? And that's a decision our
5 consultant can't make.
6 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: That's right.
7 SENATOR CATHCART: So I don't know where
8 we're going there. I mean, I agree with you. That
9 makes some sense to me to look at Lovell if it's got
10 plenty of room in their school and Cowley has got
11 buildings that are inadequate but very few students and
12 there's room for them in other facilities. But now
13 we're getting into a consolidation -- school district
14 consolidation issue, which is very different and
15 complicated, by the way. So I don't know where to go
16 there.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Just a quick
18 question. Mike, is Hyattville -- are you kidding? Is
19 it only two students?
20 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: It used to have
21 only two. I'm not sure what it has now.
22 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, I was told
23 over the phone yesterday that it has four this year and
24 probably will only have two next year.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: You weren't
90
1 kidding, then.
2 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: No, I was not
3 kidding.
4 SENATOR MASSIE: Madam Chairman, back to
5 the question before. We specifically wrote into the
6 statutes -- and I think that it's still there -- that
7 those are options that we would consider. We may not
8 pass them on to the legislature. And obviously if we do
9 decide to consolidate outside of the district, then it
10 has to have legislative approval.
11 But I think that that's an option that we need
12 to take a look at. And certainly I would want to
13 involve the community of Cowley and Lovell in any kind
14 of discussion that's held on that. And we specifically
15 need to let them know and have them turn out and talk to
16 us about it. But I think it needs to be on the table.
17 I think you raise some good points. And if we
18 can have those as some of the options for us to look at
19 before we make the decision, that's probably better than
20 making a decision and then looking at the costs.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman?
22 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Maybe Dodds can
24 tell us what his or MGT's expertise in that area is of
25 looking at that issue of need in terms of the community
91
1 need or those close community needs. Are those factors
2 that you can comment on to us?
3 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, I would think
4 that it's our responsibility as your consultant to --
5 when we go out and assess these buildings, to look at
6 those kinds of remedies within a district, at least, so
7 that if Rocky Mountain High School is half empty and
8 there's another high school within seven miles, that
9 they could consolidate within the district. We need to
10 be telling you those opportunities are there. I don't
11 want to be telling you to consolidate districts. I'll
12 leave that one up to you folks.
13 SENATOR COE: It would sure be nice if
14 you would, though.
15 MR. CROMWELL: We're not doing our job if
16 we're not bringing those kinds of things to the table.
17 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman?
18 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
19 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: I don't -- I
20 really don't want to have you out there picking and
21 choosing, you shall consolidate and you shall not. I
22 mean, your advice is and would be greatly appreciated.
23 But the reason, Madam Chairman, that I brought
24 this point to this select committee is because we are --
25 we may not be looking at all the responsible decisions
92
1 unless we know to question some of these -- some of the
2 appropriateness of what is occurring, just as we did
3 with Casper and questioned the replacement of every one
4 of those buildings. And we caught -- I -- we caught
5 flack for that. It is appropriate that we look at
6 the -- responsibly look at the question of what a need
7 is and what is a community's interest. And those two
8 things may or may not be the same thing.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chair?
10 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I think the
12 easiest way to do this is how you're doing the other
13 processes. You give us four or five options. And you
14 could always say, well, there's a school five miles
15 away, and possibly that's an option. That way they
16 won't shoot at you. They'll shoot at us.
17 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, is there
18 concern with MGT proceeding on with these twelve
19 buildings?
20 SENATOR DEVIN: I guess a time line is
21 the issue. And if we -- I'm getting a go-ahead --
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: The quicker the
23 better.
24 SENATOR DEVIN: And if we had an issue
25 where it just can't be done properly within that time
93
1 line, then we need to discuss it.
2 MR. CROMWELL: I'm watching my clock
3 here. If I can move on to seismic.
4 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
5 MR. CROMWELL: The seismic review, we
6 were asked to do a seismic evaluation of all school
7 buildings in Seismic Zone 3, which is essentially the
8 western border of the state. We identified, I think, 32
9 buildings that were built before a certain date that the
10 engineers felt was critical to review based on codes
11 updates. That was Phase 1.
12 Phase 2, the engineers went out and did the --
13 used the FEMA methodology for a visual inspection of
14 those buildings to identify buildings which needed a
15 more thorough inspection. They identified eight
16 buildings that required a more thorough -- I'm sorry.
17 They identified nine buildings that should have a more
18 thorough look at, an actual analysis of the structural
19 components and the loads.
20 Two of those buildings we were informed are at
21 CB Ranch and are going to be replaced shortly. So we
22 took those off the list. We added Thermopolis High
23 School. The Department of Ed advised us that that high
24 school was built with very much a similar design as
25 Lander High School. And so they were already aware of
94
1 some structural problems there. So we added that back
2 in. So we're back up to eight buildings. And we're
3 just about ready to commence that third phase of going
4 out and looking at these eight buildings, do a
5 structural analysis of the load-carrying members to see
6 what needs to be done, if anything, to make these
7 buildings seismically safe.
8 I don't have an exact time line for you right
9 now. It should be within a couple of months that we'll
10 have a report that looks at each building and outlines
11 and designs a remedy for that -- the structural problems
12 in that building and gives a cost estimate of what that
13 probably will cost to accomplish.
14 SENATOR DEVIN: Any questions on the
15 seismic review? Yes.
16 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Madam Chairman,
17 would a seismic retrofit jump ahead of the immediate
18 needs for rehabilitation construction?
19 SENATOR DEVIN: Well, good question.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
21 wouldn't it kind of depend on what the final analysis
22 shows on those schools? Some of them could be
23 identified as immediate need seismicwise. Others may
24 be -- it's hard to know without knowing what the report
25 brings in.
95
1 SENATOR DEVIN: I would say it might
2 bring a lot. My guess is it might bring them onto the
3 immediate needs list, depending on the urgency, whether
4 it can still be occupied or not. Then we may have
5 greater urgency. There is an emergency process, but
6 that's disruptive to use that if you don't have to.
7 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, it's my
8 understanding, anyway -- I have not been told by our
9 engineers that any of these buildings are in imminent
10 structural danger. It's a matter -- in the case of a
11 seismic event, they would create a problem. But they're
12 not a danger to the inhabitants until a seismic event
13 happens. I think I will instruct the engineers to give
14 us some sense of priority for these remedies.
15 SENATOR DEVIN: That would be good.
16 SENATOR MASSIE: We don't want to shake
17 anyone up.
18 SENATOR DEVIN: We've done enough of
19 that.
20 Any other questions? I think you probably --
21 SENATOR COE: Madam Chairman, just one
22 question. I wondered about a building that scores 0.0.
23 SENATOR DEVIN: Is this on the seismic --
24 SENATOR COE: Number 30, CB Ranch High
25 School, 0.0.
96
1 MR. CROMWELL: Madam Chair, that is an
2 old Forest Service log cabin that was hauled to the
3 school and put on -- I think it's just put on blocks or
4 something. I've been in that building. Yeah, it's a
5 zero seismically.
6 SENATOR DEVIN: But it's a vacated zero
7 as of next year. Is that right?
8 MR. CROMWELL: My understanding, yeah. I
9 was told it was being replaced or wasn't going to be
10 around.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
12 may I ask one more question?
13 Dodds, do you see your role or MGT's role
14 concerning Powell High School and Sheridan Middle School
15 as any different than you do on the Phase 2 projects
16 that are identified here in terms of your job? I mean,
17 you may be reporting to JAC on one and to someone else
18 on another. But is there any difference in the way you
19 were approaching these or MGT?
20 MR. CROMWELL: No, there's no difference.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Thanks.
22 SENATOR DEVIN: All right. Thank you
23 very much. We'll let you get off to the airport.
24 MR. CROMWELL: Thank you.
25 SENATOR DEVIN: Any further discussion in
97
1 this area to wrap up?
2 (No response.)
3 SENATOR DEVIN: Any discussion -- I know,
4 committee, we kind of moved through that. Are there any
5 other issues you would like to talk about?
6 (No response.)
7 SENATOR DEVIN: And I guess your
8 discussion raised a question in my mind of whether -- we
9 used the word "consolidation," and in a sense it is.
10 But there would not necessarily need to be a formal
11 consolidation for one community to use another
12 community's schools. It may also make a difference
13 whether we're talking about replacing a roof or we're
14 talking about a whole new school in terms of that.
15 So I think those options are important to look
16 at. Because we certainly have students right now in one
17 district that go to school in another district by their
18 own choice or for their own convenience. You know, five
19 miles might be an issue.
20 SENATOR DEVIN: Senator Cathcart.
21 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman, an
22 example of how to deal with that occurred down in our
23 district, in fact, in Laramie 2, when Goshen County had
24 to close the Lagrange school. Those students could stay
25 in that district and go to Yoder to Southeast, or they
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1 could go to Albin, which is in a different school
2 district. And then somehow there's an arrangement made
3 for out-of-district tuition from one district to the
4 other. I think we resolved that now.
5 But I don't see that school district
6 boundaries are sacred, necessarily, if we've gone across
7 those boundaries to make facilities, good facilities
8 available.
9 SENATOR DEVIN: Any other discussion?
10 (No response.)
11 SENATOR DEVIN: Then we have the School
12 Facilities Commission update. Would you mind coming up
13 and pull up another chair?
14 MR. WARE: Madam Chairman and committee
15 members, for the record, I'm Charles Ware, commissioner
16 for the School Facilities Commission. And our chairman
17 has asked me to give you a preliminary report on our
18 activities, which I will do. We officially don't start
19 until July 1, of course, of this year and our
20 appointment. But we have started as quickly as we can.
21 We've only had two meetings to date. One is a
22 phone conference call about three weeks ago. And last
23 Tuesday we met in Casper for the first time ever face to
24 face. And we hired a director in four and a half hours'
25 period of time. Just an update there, we had nine
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1 people apply for the position. I think we had three or
2 four Ph.D.s apply for the position. We interviewed
3 five, recommended two to the governor, and the governor
4 appointed Don as our director. And we're very much in
5 support of that.
6 We do not have a secretary. We have no other
7 staff. We have three empty office rooms in Cheyenne.
8 We have no computers. We have no telephones, no
9 business cards, no fax. We have e-mails, et cetera. So
10 based on our discussions early this morning, that's
11 where we are as of today. And we do have a lot of a
12 steep hill to climb.
13 The next thing I'd say is, I've handed out to
14 you -- we've put this together. And these are our phone
15 numbers, our e-mails and our fax numbers and our
16 addresses for the commission. And we would like to have
17 you be able to use those and have those. And I agree,
18 again, from our discussions earlier this morning, that
19 we need to, in a sense, sit together here.
20 We have scheduled a meeting on Friday, August
21 the 16th in Cheyenne. We don't have a location for the
22 commission to have our next kind of formal meeting. And
23 I'm wondering if you're looking with this committee to
24 meet in August again, if we might -- and, again, I don't
25 want to jump ahead as far as -- Frosty is our chairman.
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1 But in light of the way things are going, maybe we ought
2 to try to have some joint meeting then, or maybe we
3 could reschedule a time that would work for both groups.
4 And Don would be in charge of that.
5 SENATOR DEVIN: Would MGT be reporting by
6 the 16th of August? Would they be --
7 MR. NELSON: Right, Madam Chairman. I
8 believe that Dodds is on another project. I think it's
9 the following week. So that's why we set August 15th.
10 So I believe they'll be ready.
11 SENATOR DEVIN: 15th or 16th?
12 MR. NELSON: Probably the 15th.
13 SENATOR DEVIN: That's a Thursday.
14 MR. NELSON: Right. And probably that
15 Friday. I'm not sure when he leaves, for sure. But
16 Mr. Cromwell, I think, would be around that time.
17 MR. WARE: So I'd just throw that out
18 as --
19 SENATOR DEVIN: As potentially a joint
20 meeting.
21 MR. WARE: Right, that would be a face to
22 face.
23 SENATOR DEVIN: Makes sense.
24 MR. WARE: I think -- I appreciate
25 Representative Shivler's comment before lunch. In our
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1 one meeting together, the six of us -- and Judy
2 Catchpole was there, of course. We're going to be a
3 good group. We're going to move as quickly as we can.
4 And we're all very dedicated to move this thing forward.
5 So again, in my personal experience in the way we
6 handled interviews and et cetera, we're going to have an
7 initial group of strong people, and we'll get up to
8 speed as quickly as we can.
9 Related to that, as we build what staff we
10 need, we're going to have to steal people from other --
11 you know, from the education department or whatever,
12 because we don't have the time line to bring somebody on
13 and teach them. We need to pull people at a level with
14 us that are in place or know the process. Obviously
15 we'll use MGT to accelerate our curve as we're going
16 along. And, of course, that will be Don's decision as
17 to what he needs to do there to build a staff. But the
18 time line that we're under, we need to have people who
19 have some experience and background in the whole
20 process.
21 I think everybody is familiar, or if not, with
22 the people that are on the commission. Frosty Kepler is
23 the chairman, appointed by the governor, to start us
24 out. We basically have three people from industry and
25 three people from the education side of things, with the
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1 state superintendent as the seventh person on the
2 committee.
3 Don, do you have any quick comments? That's
4 all I have. That's where we are right now. Again, I'm
5 not trying to make any excuses. But we are babies still
6 right now and are learning very, very quickly.
7 MR. BRYNGELSON: Madam Chairman, we are
8 trying to get geared up very quickly. I'll be meeting
9 next week with state Department of Education officials
10 and Mr. Kepler. Mr. Kepler wanted me to pass on that he
11 really appreciated the support of the Department of
12 Education, Judy Catchpole and particularly Joel Simpson,
13 in helping organize everything. But we do have a lot to
14 do. Looks like it will be interesting. Look forward to
15 the challenge. I think we can do a good job for you.
16 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman,
17 Don and Charlie, either one, what time line do you have
18 in mind to have at least your skeleton of your staff in
19 place with the kind of expertise -- or have you even had
20 time to develop that?
21 MR. BRYNGELSON: Madam Chairman, we
22 haven't had a lot of time to talk with the whole
23 commission about that. I have not met with them again.
24 But we are looking at hopefully next week to be able to
25 look at some of those things. We do have some things in
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1 mind. We'd like to have some people on board July 1
2 with me to proceed so we can start getting an office set
3 up and so forth. I just don't know if the people that
4 we may steal can get out of their jobs that quickly.
5 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: You have someone
6 in mind, obviously.
7 MR. WARE: I would comment on that, too,
8 and support Don. He was officially appointed on
9 Tuesday. Today is Thursday. So he's been on the job
10 one and a half days. And I know for myself that we need
11 to give it some thought. But no, we don't have a time
12 line as of today, except that we know that it needs to
13 be urgent.
14 SENATOR DEVIN: I am reminded that we
15 need to have a discussion about this date. Because this
16 is the same thing we ran into yesterday with the
17 education committee. The primary election, a reality in
18 this world, is Tuesday, the 20th.
19 MR. WARE: Yes.
20 SENATOR DEVIN: So our opportunities to
21 get good representation before -- that close to the
22 primary are going to be really limited.
23 If Mr. Cromwell is in town for projects, do
24 you have any idea whether he might be able to be
25 available the -- following the primary? If he's in town
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1 that week, is it possible to do it after, versus before?
2 Or what are our options as we chairmen start to talk to
3 each other and so forth?
4 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, my
5 understanding is after the 15th, he will be out through
6 the first part of September.
7 MR. WARE: He's on vacation. I asked him
8 that earlier. That's a planned, scheduled thing.
9 SENATOR DEVIN: And you're looking at the
10 15th?
11 MR. NELSON: That he will have the report
12 prepared, right.
13 SENATOR DEVIN: And you're looking at
14 potentially meeting maybe like the 15th and 16th, your
15 commission?
16 MR. WARE: Yes.
17 SENATOR DEVIN: So if we did it just one
18 day, the 15th, is that possible for those of you here?
19 MR. WARE: I would definitely speak to
20 this. The commissioner would give that reconsideration
21 with the election. I mean, that is -- as important as
22 this is, that's more important.
23 SENATOR DEVIN: And it would appear that
24 if I get too many nos, then we're looking at the
25 beginning of September.
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1 MR. WARE: True. Now, again, Madam
2 Chairman, we may go ahead and meet still, because
3 there's plenty of things that we can put in our agenda.
4 But I just wanted to offer that from our discussion this
5 morning.
6 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes, it would be good if
7 the two can meet jointly.
8 Tentatively pencil that in. Let's try to get
9 ahold of the committees as soon as we can -- the
10 committee as soon as we can to see what those
11 possibilities are. And I guess in order to really do
12 that, we need to talk to Dodds and Frosty and see what
13 an alternate date is in September. But that does get
14 later than we'd like to be, maybe. But I don't know any
15 other way to try -- it is an important meeting to try to
16 get that update in attendance because decisions will be
17 made.
18 So we'll pencil that in. We'll shoot for
19 that. But we'll try to make some fairly quick contacts
20 with our committee members -- we have some who aren't
21 here -- and find out what we can do and then let you
22 know as a committee what -- as quickly as we can. And I
23 don't know whether -- Management Council hasn't set a
24 date. I know people have a long way to travel from
25 other parts of the state. So when we can --
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1 particularly if it's a Cheyenne meeting, which I think
2 you said yours was.
3 MR. WARE: Yes. That's what we have set.
4 SENATOR DEVIN: If we could condense
5 that, that would help. I guess our -- but he may have
6 already arranged to come into Cheyenne. Maybe our other
7 option is Casper, to be more central. But I don't know
8 whether Mr. Cromwell has already arranged --
9 MR. NELSON: He hasn't.
10 SENATOR DEVIN: That would be the other
11 thing that would save some people more time.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chair?
13 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Don, we don't
15 have your name and address on here. Can we get that?
16 MR. BRYNGELSON: Madam Chairman, mine
17 will be changing pretty soon. So I'm not sure what it's
18 going to be. But I can give you my phone number for
19 right now. And that's my home phone in Wheatland. It's
20 (307) 322-5942.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Do you have an
22 e-mail?
23 MR. BRYNGELSON: Dbryngel@communicomm --
24 c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-o-m-m -- .com.
25 SENATOR DEVIN: Okay. Say that one more
107
1 time.
2 MR. BRYNGELSON: Yes. It's
3 dbryngel@communicomm -- c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-o-m-m -- .com.
4 I'm going to relocate in Cheyenne hopefully as soon as I
5 can. And when I do, I'll give you all the updated
6 information, and maybe we'll have an office phone.
7 SENATOR MASSIE: Madam Chairman, just a
8 suggestion. Once again, I remember the discussion as
9 this bill was going through, and there were some folks
10 who characterized the setup of the commission as the end
11 of local control. And I don't think that a lot of us
12 believe that. But I think that everyone is sensitive to
13 the local districts having as much input as possible.
14 So I'm wondering if it would be possible, as
15 the commission is setting its meetings up, that notices
16 are sent to the 48 superintendents about the location of
17 the meeting and perhaps extend an invitation for them to
18 attend.
19 MR. WARE: Uh-huh. Okay.
20 SENATOR DEVIN: And how do you usually do
21 that, Dave. Do you post it? They seem to like -- they
22 certainly seem to know when our education meetings are.
23 So how do you address that issue that Senator Massie
24 brings up?
25 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, some of the
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1 districts belong to what's called the mailing service.
2 And I think they also utilize our website, which posts
3 meeting notices all the time. And then if it's directed
4 by the chairman, we specifically mail it right to them,
5 to each superintendent.
6 SENATOR DEVIN: So it could go on their
7 mailing service, and it could go on our website, the
8 commission's meetings. Is that correct?
9 MR. NELSON: Yes. We could put it on our
10 calendar. It would hit some of them.
11 SENATOR DEVIN: So -- yes, Don.
12 MR. BRYNGELSON: Madam Chairman, we could
13 also go through the school board association and school
14 superintendents association. All the superintendents
15 have an e-mail contact through that. So we can notify
16 one place, and they could probably take care of it for
17 us.
18 SENATOR DEVIN: That's what I was
19 thinking, if we could do a one- or two-, three-place
20 notification. So why don't we do that.
21 Committee, any questions?
22 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman?
23 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
24 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman.
25 Charlie, I heard you talking about the commission had
109
1 met, and you were talking about getting up to speed and
2 getting staff hired. Has there been discussion about
3 what your staff is going to look like? I'm interested
4 to know, for example, how many people do you think
5 you're going to bring on board, and who are they? Are
6 we looking for a design engineer? Are we looking for
7 people who potentially down the road can move in and do
8 exactly what MGT is now doing? Do you have an idea of
9 that? Have you had those kind of discussions?
10 MR. WARE: Madam Chairman, Senator, no,
11 we have not had those discussions yet. And again, those
12 are discussions, now that we at least have a director,
13 that we can start. Personally, coming from my side of
14 the equation in the industry, we definitely need some of
15 those construction design type of people on staff. And
16 that's a big question and an important question, whether
17 this commission will build its own MGT type of group or
18 not. But I don't have an answer to that right this
19 minute.
20 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman?
21 SENATOR DEVIN: Yes.
22 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: I think you've
23 answered my question, but I also want to at least bring
24 to this committee, also, the concern that we have,
25 particularly with JAC, about construction oversight,
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1 which is separate from engineering.
2 MR. WARE: Uh-huh.
3 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: But have you had
4 discussions about that oversight?
5 MR. WARE: No, except I see that as this
6 commission's main -- one of its main responsibilities,
7 is construction oversight.
8 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Madam Chairman, so
9 do I. But one of the things that -- it is fairly clear,
10 at least so far -- well, the ongoing projects, the ones
11 that we funded last year, Powell and Sheridan, the state
12 has no oversight as far as construction oversight as of
13 now.
14 MR. WARE: Okay.
15 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: It was fairly
16 clear earlier that you were saying, hold it here. We're
17 not even in charge. Or at least the impression --
18 you're not in charge of that area.
19 MR. WARE: Yet. I guess that's what I
20 was saying, yes.
21 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Okay. Not yet.
22 So you would be comfortable -- at least speaking for
23 yourself, you would be comfortable, as we move forward,
24 with taking oversight of these projects that are -- that
25 may be ongoing by that time?
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1 MR. WARE: I think so, yes, speaking for
2 myself. And I think as you look at me right now, I
3 probably, because of my involvement in the legislature
4 in doing these things, I -- we had a special meeting
5 Tuesday in Casper on alternative delivery systems for
6 schools with contractors, architects and design
7 engineers. And right now I'd say I'm probably the most
8 educated of the commissioners on all of what's being
9 talked about right now, just because of my previous
10 dealings day to day coming into this. I think the
11 people on the education side, it's a fairly -- you know,
12 fairly new to them. So they'll catch up.
13 But as far as my knowing the good points and
14 the negative points and those type of things, I'm
15 probably ahead of the group right now.
16 SENATOR DEVIN: And we may need to talk
17 more about how to design that. But you know, some of
18 this -- some of what we saw this morning, certainly the
19 most recent addition to the middle school here in
20 Sheridan is sinking, with obvious sorts of things, where
21 the soil was either not compacted properly in the
22 construction or they didn't -- I've been told by people
23 with experience here it didn't go down to bedrock and
24 shored that up to put the foundation on.
25 So that would be -- you know, maybe it's
112
1 identifying key points along the construction.
2 Certainly the local district I would hope would put some
3 kind of construction management in place on a day-to-day
4 basis, which they've asked to be involved in many cases.
5 In some cases, they may not want to be that involved. I
6 would imagine it partly depends on the size of the
7 district and the expertise.
8 MR. WARE: I would agree very
9 specifically with that. The different districts are
10 going to be involved differently because of their
11 abilities and their work loads and those type of things,
12 yes.
13 SENATOR DEVIN: But there's probably some
14 key points.
15 MR. WARE: Uh-huh.
16 SENATOR DEVIN: We've had schools that
17 were about to proceed on soils -- and I don't know the
18 details because I wasn't involved. But I understand up
19 in the northeast, there were some -- we were about to go
20 with some real soils issues, and I don't know the
21 details of that.
22 SENATOR CATHCART: That was a simple
23 matter of changing design from spread footage to drill
24 piers and case lines. And we did that in JAC and added
25 some dollars to the project.
113
1 SENATOR COE: Well, we did a good job
2 choosing a site for the north facility prison.
3 SENATOR DEVIN: I guess we don't -- when
4 we put this investment in, we know there are so many
5 dollars in front of us to be put into school capital
6 construction that we really don't want to be making
7 mistakes that could be prevented and be back fixing
8 things on schools that are relatively new because they
9 weren't done right because there either wasn't the local
10 expertise or there wasn't the right supervision or
11 whatever.
12 We really don't want another prison of the
13 nature that was built 20 years ago. I mean, it's
14 every -- just the nightmare of every government, I
15 think, too. And it has a myriad of things. But we
16 don't want schools out there with those kinds of
17 problems. So we're just trying to look at, where do the
18 safeguards need to come in?
19 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
20 I don't have a question, but I would like to bring
21 something up to Don and Charles and this committee while
22 they're here. I would ask that MGT provide us a letter,
23 clarifying to us what their role is as the state's
24 consultant on school capital construction. And I say
25 that because I think many people on this committee and
114
1 possibly even in the legislature view MGT as our expert,
2 the state's expert.
3 And I would like to know if MGT views
4 themselves as advocating the state's position or
5 school's positions, district positions. Because what I
6 see them advocating on square footage on Powell and
7 Sheridan is more a district position in terms of what's
8 best for the school, or how big can we go within a range
9 that they've created? So I think it's important to
10 clarify that for our committee and for the commission.
11 And then -- gosh, what was the second point I
12 had?
13 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Basket of goods?
14 SENATOR DEVIN: While you're considering,
15 did you get that, Mary? Did you get the concept of
16 what's being asked for?
17 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, that is
18 right, yes.
19 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: The second point
20 was that, when in the process does MGT show the
21 standards to the districts?
22 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: They don't.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Because I'm not
24 sure that Sheridan has ever seen any standards. And I
25 understand the superintendent's comments about, we look
115
1 at it programmatically, and what can we offer? But I
2 don't think that's the way the standards -- I think you
3 come to a point where you collide when schools -- when
4 districts are doing that that don't match the
5 MGT standard. Because -- and we've seen that with
6 Buffalo and Kaycee and the standards that come out.
7 So in my opinion, those ought to be provided
8 to the districts at the earliest possible opportunity so
9 they are aware of what the state standards are in terms
10 of program and those types of things.
11 SENATOR DEVIN: Dave, I guess I would
12 ask, where are the standards available, and when are
13 they available to the districts?
14 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, those are
15 promulgated by the state department and are distributed
16 supposedly through that office to the districts. I
17 don't know the procedures involved, but the guidelines
18 and the standards are in their rules and regs.
19 SENATOR DEVIN: So they would have them
20 in hand. But should we begin construction -- you have
21 them in hand?
22 MR. DOUGHERTY: Madam Chair, we have the
23 former standards, but we don't have the standards from
24 which MGT developed the comparison -- the middle school
25 that they developed. So we're just looking at that
116
1 right now. And so we do not have these standards. We
2 had the state standards, the former state standards,
3 from which we developed that. But we don't have those.
4 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
5 that's a prototypical model that they built from the
6 standards. And the standards are available at the
7 Department of Education. You probably have them, don't
8 you?
9 MS. SPRIGGS: Right. Madam Chairman, we
10 have the state facility guidelines and standards, which
11 is what we based our middle school model off of. We
12 followed -- if they said 1,050 for classroom space, we
13 looked at that and made sure we didn't exceed it. We
14 followed those guidelines. But what MGT used for their
15 studies is what Mr. Simpson is saying we didn't have
16 available.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
18 those are the old standards. They have a new standard.
19 I think it came out May of last year. And the new
20 standard is 750 to 900 or something like that. We
21 adjusted it because the 1,050 was based on 30 students.
22 Is that right?
23 SENATOR DEVIN: Yeah. We were like the
24 highest in the nation.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Our class sizes
117
1 are between 15 and 20. So we adjusted it for that. So
2 there is a new set of standards.
3 MS. SPRIGGS: Right. And, Madam
4 Chairman, I think we were using 890 for our classroom
5 sizes. And we were following those. And you're right.
6 Exactly. We have those guidelines. It was the
7 prototypical models that MGT was using that this is the
8 first time we've actually seen, when you guys were
9 talking about that earlier.
10 SENATOR DEVIN: You had a comment?
11 MR. ZADDACH: Madam Chairman, Randy
12 Zaddach with Gorder-South Architects. I just wanted to
13 add to the comments on the standards. As an architect
14 in the state who's been through the design process with
15 a few districts, I think it's the responsibility of the
16 architect to have those current standards and bring
17 those to the district, at least when the architect is
18 involved with the district.
19 My past experience is kind of showing that the
20 districts usually do have the state standards in hand.
21 But I see that as the architectural role, to make sure
22 that the current standards are in place and be utilized
23 from the very start of the process. We've had pretty
24 good success with that. And when we come to the table
25 with MGT, we've pretty much been in line in terms of the
118
1 gross square foot standards and individual room
2 standards. So I think that is a key thing to make sure
3 we get off on the right track.
4 SENATOR MASSIE: Madam Chairman, with
5 regard to the first point that Representative Simpson
6 brought out, this is new for all of us as we're moving
7 through this. And I think we're all kind of feeling our
8 way. I don't view MGT as being an advocate for us or
9 local districts. And I hope that they don't think they
10 should be in an advocacy role, but more of our experts
11 to come to us and provide us with options and with
12 certain types of expertise.
13 I don't think that they were outside of that
14 when they were making their recommendations today,
15 frankly. But if we need to clarify it, I hope that we
16 approach it from that viewpoint, rather than asking them
17 if they're advocates on one side or the other.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
19 I just want to know how they view their role so I can
20 take that into account when I view the options they
21 present. That's important to me to know.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: An excellent
23 example, what Colin just said, is, when we looked at
24 this initially at 180 square feet per student and then
25 took it down -- excuse me. I'm in the middle school.
119
1 When we looked at 150 and took it down to 135 and --
2 with 800 students, that's $1.2 million. That's a
3 significant difference between 135 feet and 150.
4 And if, in fact, 135 is -- you know, I'm not
5 even going to say that's adequate. I think probably 120
6 is adequate. 135 is above adequate. There's no reason
7 for us to put that additional money in when there's many
8 more schools to be built.
9 So your point is well taken. And this
10 concerns me when we have a range. Anytime you have a
11 range, if it's 120 to 150 or 160 to 180, human nature
12 is, let's do the 180, and let's do the 150, when, in
13 fact, you may not need it. And I think with a middle
14 school of this size, 800 students, that's a large middle
15 school for Wyoming. That's a large middle school for
16 anywhere.
17 And the 135 is a gracious plenty, because
18 looking at our regional averages, one of them was down
19 to 90 square feet, which I think probably we couldn't
20 serve our basket of goods out of. And I understand
21 where you're coming from. And I don't think we should
22 hit the max on everything simply because it is the max.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
24 I'd like to just clarify my second comment. I meant the
25 prototypical model, not necessarily the standards.
120
1 Because as I recall last session, having discussions
2 with Buffalo representatives and district
3 representatives, comparing the model, the prototypical
4 model, with what they felt was adequate was not the
5 same.
6 So I think it's important for the districts to
7 know what the prototypical models say, along with the
8 standard, so they can see where they might come in. And
9 if they're offering eight math classes, as opposed to a
10 certain number in the model, then that's something that
11 we have to deal with on the enhancement side, I guess.
12 SENATOR DEVIN: And I think -- it's my
13 understanding that the prototypical model was built as a
14 test working piece to see if the basket could be
15 delivered, what it would take to deliver the basket.
16 And that's where the prototype came from, rather than
17 something -- so that we could test it, rather than
18 something that is in rules and regs. Is that correct?
19 MS. BYRNES: That is correct.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: Madam Chairman,
21 it might be wise to get in writing from MGT what the
22 prototypical model is for so we can look back and read
23 it. Because I think there is some misunderstanding --
24 or at least there is on my part -- about what it is
25 intended to show.
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1 SENATOR DEVIN: Okay. I think that when
2 the question arose where the model can't be delivered at
3 180 square feet or 150 square feet, the basket cannot,
4 then there was an obligation to look at that and say,
5 let's take the program, the basket, and put it against a
6 prototypical model, and can it be delivered? It was my
7 understanding that was the genesis of it. But I don't
8 think it would hurt to clarify that.
9 SENATOR CATHCART: Madam Chairman, I
10 think developing prototypical models for different sizes
11 of schools certainly has some merit, because we can't
12 come up with a standard that one size fits all. That's
13 why we have this range from 120 to 150 and 150 to 180
14 for different size schools. And I'm not sure anyone is
15 smart enough to figure out how many students it would
16 take to justify 135 square feet.
17 So I would think that that would be something
18 the commission may be looking at as they get into the
19 process, is developing prototypical models for
20 different-sized schools and seeing what's appropriate.
21 But that's one of the problems we have with the
22 standard. It's just that you've got one size fits all,
23 and we have a range of gross square feet per student,
24 which nobody is certain how to apply that.
25 But on the prototypical model they did, his
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1 own testimony said that 168 gross square feet per
2 student was -- that's what it come out to for the
3 perfect model. But they still went ahead with the 180
4 for flexibility. So it makes some sense to me that
5 maybe developing models for different-size schools, from
6 elementary, middle school, high school size, there might
7 be some merit in doing that so we have something to look
8 at in the future.
9 MR. WARE: I'd like to enter that bit of
10 the conversation when Representative Shivler was talking
11 earlier. On the private side, when my contractors built
12 the training center in Casper, we set a budget, and we
13 fit within that budget. But we designed both buildings
14 to expand north. And so you could take the low end of
15 the range and then build a design that you can very
16 easily put another room on. We're set up to put two
17 more classrooms on. Electricity, water is stubbed into
18 that one wall. You plan that in advance so that you can
19 do that very easily.
20 And therefore you -- we utilized the money
21 that we had and got what we had. And we're anticipating
22 some expansion there. But we designed it in from the
23 get-go, instead of saying, oh, man, we built it, and we
24 built it up against the side of a hill, and we can't
25 expand anywhere.
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1 We're trying to think down the road. So that
2 could very easily fit in any model, especially when
3 you're building a new building in a school where you --
4 you know, if you have existing facilities, you may be
5 limited by some other site situations. But if you're a
6 new facility, you can lay it out with the ability to
7 expand.
8 SENATOR DEVIN: And Co-chair Shivler has
9 made a couple of comments about vocational -- not using
10 up all of the square footage of the district because of
11 things that are still out there, like voc ed and so
12 forth. Some of the study and determination may well --
13 those indicate those classes are going to need more
14 square footage. I think that's probably a reasonable
15 sort of thing to keep in our -- out there in front of
16 us.
17 In that total computation, we may end up
18 wanting some more of those, depending -- and that comes
19 back to the range of how heavy of an emphasis that is in
20 your school. A music program can take a lot more space.
21 If you're heavier into some of those pieces, it can be a
22 justification probably for more space. But that's part
23 of the reason for that.
24 Other issues to come before us?
25 MR. WARE: I have two closing comments,
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1 and we will leave you, in a sense. First off, this
2 commission is pretty much dedicated to working in a
3 situation that what we do does not become litigious.
4 We'd really like to see if we can change the attitude as
5 we come into this. That's one major position.
6 Secondly, we are going to plan to have our
7 meetings, as many as we can, at different site
8 locations -- for example, Sheridan or Newcastle,
9 wherever it might be -- for the intention to get some
10 more local public input. And personally, I like to see
11 what the site is, what's going on. I don't want to sit
12 in Cheyenne and make decisions about Powell and Big Horn
13 and wherever they might be.
14 So we're going to plan as we get into this,
15 move our meetings around as much as we can to local
16 areas and again advertise. I appreciate that, Senator
17 Massie. That is a good idea. So those are my last
18 two -- that's about where we are right now with the
19 commission, Madam Chairman.
20 SENATOR DEVIN: Anything else?
21 (No response.)
22 SENATOR DEVIN: Well, thank you. Good
23 luck on your work. We know your job is big, having
24 created it.
25 Committee, I have no other items to come
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1 before us, unless anybody else does. Then we will try
2 to get back to you -- if the 15th will work, we will go
3 with the 15th of August. If I get too many nos because
4 of that primary election being too close, then we'll
5 probably be looking at something early September. So
6 we'll try to get that back to you.
7 SENATOR COE: Madam Chairman, if we do do
8 the meeting in Cheyenne, I might try to schedule a
9 Management Council meeting. We're all there in the same
10 spot.
11 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, could I ask
12 how many people here have a problem with the 15th? Or
13 do you know yet?
14 REPRESENTATIVE SIMPSON: I don't know.
15 I'm not sure.
16 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: I've got a problem
17 with the 15th. But the first week in September is
18 worse. So I choose the 15th, 16th.
19 SENATOR MASSIE: 15th is fine.
20 SENATOR DEVIN: So we've got one "I don't
21 know." So we'll check with others on the committee.
22 Okay. We are adjourned.
23 (Hearing proceedings concluded 3:29 p.m.,
24 June 20, 2002.)
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1 C E R T I F I C A T E
2
3 I, RANDY A. HATLESTAD, a Registered Merit
4 Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported by machine
5 shorthand the proceedings contained herein and that the
6 foregoing 125 pages constitute a full, true and correct
7 transcript.
8 Dated this 19th day of July, 2002.
9
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11 -----------------------------------
RANDY A. HATLESTAD
12 Registered Merit Reporter
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