An emergency meeting of the Macon County Board of Education on Friday morning resulted in the board approving two resolutions to ask county commissioners for an extra $945,000 for school construction projects.
The first vote approved asking the Macon County Board of Commissioners for $825,000 to remove a leaking underground diesel tank at Highlands School and mitigate some of the soil underneath. The second vote approved asking the commissioners for $120,000 to remove “organic material” and wet spots found underneath the Macon Middle School track and fill in with gravel before laying the new track surface on top.
The 8:30 a.m. emergency meeting on Sept. 6 at the Macon County Schools Central Office got called less than 24 hours beforehand due to needing commissioner approval for the funding at its Sept. 10, meeting. That commissioners meeting was to take place after press time and will be covered in the Wednesday, Sept. 18, edition of The Franklin Press.
Both votes were 4-0, with Melissa Evans not present due to a scheduling conflict. Hilary Wilkes and Board Chair Jim Breedlove took part remotely, while Stephanie Laseter and Diedre Breeden were at the Central Office.
Wilkes said Vannoy, the Highlands School construction manager at risk, told the school liaison committee on Sept. 4 that a decision had to be made on the leaking diesel tank.
Macon County Schools Maintenance Director Tracy Tallent said there are three options for repairing the leaking tank. The first would be to abandon the tank and put in a vapor fan to mitigate the leak for $610,000. The second is to remove the tank and mitigate under the stone slab the tank is under for $825,000. The third is removing the tank and all contaminated soil six feet below the 12-foot-deep tank, which would cost $1.3 million.
Tallent said Vannoy wants to fill the area with “flowable material,” but he would rather fill it with concrete. Tallent felt like Vannoy was avoiding the concrete option but said consultants at Terracon agreed with him on the concrete idea.
Tallent believes the N.C. Division of Environmental Quality would not allow foam fill and said the contractor had not contacted DEQ to get input until after the Sept. 4 meeting. Tallent warned that choosing to leave the tank could backfire if DEQ says the tank needs to be removed, costing the county more money.
Breeden asked if this would delay the entire Highlands School project. Tallent said he doesn’t know, and Wilkes said the contractor needs to order several main components this week. The plan was to present a Guaranteed Maximum Price for the Highlands project to the county commissioners on Tuesday without the tank remediation price, Wilkes said. The rest of the project will be roughly $8.5 million.
Tallent recommended the $825,000 option, saying County Manager Derek Roland agreed and that it “covered the bases.” However, Tallent said they won’t 100% know the price until the DEQ advises on it.
MMS track
On the Macon Middle School track project, Macon County Schools Grounds and Facilities Director Todd Gibbs said the “organic material” was discovered after the old track was milled. Gibbs said the subcontractor found organic materials up to 2.5 feet deep.
The track contractor told Gibbs they won’t warranty the track if there is not six inches of remediation under the track straightaways and eight inches at the corners to get rid of the organic materials.
According to Lynch, “organic materials” are non-soils that hold water. Lynch said since the MMS property was a former farm, the organic material could be a wide variety of different things.
Gibbs said he believes the dilapidated condition of the now-former track was due to age, not due to the organic materials. Gibbs said the organic materials could cause the track to sink or bubble.
Breedlove said he doesn’t want to go through what they did with the Franklin High track again, where the school board resurfaced the track and further issues rendered it unusable for meets.
“If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right,” Breedlove said.
Breeden asked how the boring samples didn’t detect the organic material. Gibbs said the organic material found so far is under the turn close to the school, so the eight boring samples didn’t detect it.
The school board approved a resolution asking the commissioners for $120,000 for the track remediation. The school board also has roughly $55,000 of a $109,000 athletic facilities grant left over for contingency, which could be paid back to the county after the project is done.
In May, the county awarded GeoServices the MMS track project for $930,180.
Tallent said there’s been “problem after problem after problem” with the MMS track project. One was LS3P discovering the long jump area would be too short since the subcontractor measured for middle-school length and not high-school length. Tallent said he’s not sure if this will increase the cost. Gibbs said they’ll try to make sure the contractor eats the cost if there is any.
Breedlove said he couldn’t believe they had an engineering firm making assumptions and not asking questions.
“I’m almost beyond words, I can’t comprehend this,” Breedlove said of the long jump area snafu.
Laseter recommended checking the dimensions of all other field event spaces to make sure they’re appropriate for high school meets.
Despite approving the project back in May with a new parking lot near the baseball field as part of it, Gibbs said that shortly after completion, the contractor, GeoServices, recommended cutting out the parking lot entirely. Instead, the project includes plans for border around the track edge. Axing the parking lot had not been publicly shared until this meeting.
Board Attorney John Henning, taking part virtually, asked if there would be ADA issues with no new parking lot. Gibbs said GeoServices did not mention it.
Tallent said other issues were that crews cut all wires buried under the track area despite being marked and flagged, which have since been repaired. Another is the plan to have all drainage from the track and field area eventually run into a four-inch pipe in the softball parking lot, which could flood, and used a 10-year flood plan as part of the design.
Tallent said they’ve had issues with drainage pooling at the bottom of the hill where the new MMS auxiliary sits. That building project also resulted in issues between the county and the contractor.
Tallent told the board he has the crew and tools to install a larger pipe in the softball parking lot, noting they originally installed it more than a decade ago.
At the end of the meeting, Breedlove felt the school board did the best they could with these issues popping up.
Right before the final vote of the morning, Laseter said, “Holy cow, things are gonna come up for three years,” thinking of the planned $135 million Franklin High project and the $8.5 million Highlands School project.