Upgrading Facilities at Rye High School Could Cost $17 million

The Rye City School District may add new science labs and classrooms and upgrade deteriorating athletic facilities, multi-million improvements that would force the district to assume nearly $17 million in additional debt.

Board of Education member Kendall Egan and John D'Angelo, the district's architect, outlined the proposal for upgrading the school's facilities at Tuesday night's board meeting. The proposal was created by the district's facilities committee, of which Egan is a member.

The proposal includes the construction of four new science labs to be built near the high school gym. The labs would have 1300 square feet of classroom space and allow for science lecture and laboratory to occur within the same classroom. Two other science labs also would be updated.

The plan also calls for the addition of a new fitness and training center, renovations to the locker rooms, space for athletic offices and for storing athletic and maintenance equipment. However, the district would not renovate the field house and may eventually take it down, Egan said. Eliminating the field house would allow for the construction of a second regulation size field or science classroom additions, Egan and D'Angelo said.

The new field would be a synthetic turf field, which likely would increase runoff from the brook. D'Angelo said the district would need to do a study to determine the flood plane line for the new field, so that the Blind Brook isn't affected. He said a new drainage system would be designed with adequate retention to decrease the amount of water going into the brook.

The demolition of the field house and other field work would cost about $1.7 million, while the locker room renovations would cost $700,000. The classroom additions and facilities upgrades could cost up to $10.4 million because the high school would need an additional 20,000 square feet of space. Additional costs for other upgrades and legal and contingency expenses would bring the price to more than $16.7 million.

D'Angelo said most of the construction would be completed over two summers to minimize the impact on students, while Egan said the proposal would not be an added burden to taxpayers.

"Hopefully we have kept the taxpayer in mind and really tried to right-size this plan," she said.

In order for the plan to be approved, Rye residents would have to vote on the measure in a fall referendum, which likely wouldn't occur until November or December because the district is performing a building conditions survey that won't be released until the beginning of the school year.

Some board members expressed concerns about the additional costs, especially in light of the recent budget vote.

"We haven't even gotten to the financing part and that makes me nervous when we just had a community come out and vote 40 percent against the budget," Laura Slack, the board's vice president, said.

Kathleen Ryan, the district's business manager, said the district would need to acquire bond funding to finance the projects.

Ryan said the cost findings were preliminary because the facility committee's $17 million proposal is in the concept phase. However, she said the additional debt would have a minimal effect on the tax rate because the economic impact of borrowing $17 million would not be felt until the 2013-14 school year, when the district would have already reduced its debt levels in other areas.

Ryan said the district would have between 15 to 20 years to pay off the debt, which would add about $1.2 million in debt to the district's budget every year.