Huguenot High Construction Facing Cuts
Richmond hasn’t built a new high school in 40 years. Huguenot was to be the first new high school and now the city, not the school board, wants to remove $2.2 million from the budget. The city controls the budget for this project since it is being built as an Mayor Dwight C. Jones initiative not a school board project. Details from RTD including an article on the lighting some of the athletic fields;
Project officials said they have identified about $2.2 million in “value engineering” reductions to bring costs within the project’s construction budget of about $63 million. Overall, $580,000 is saved by eliminating lights on the baseball and softball fields and the tennis courts.
and
The planned cuts include $568,000 to switch from polished concrete flooring to vinyl tile in parts of the building, as well as $289,000 to reduce parking improvements at nearby Thompson Middle. Other cuts include $150,000 for landscaping and $90,000 to provide a soft rather than hard gym partition.
RTD Editorial on the subject of no lights for some of the athletic fields.
Rumor has it, they are using this money to run studies on if trains horns are necessary at intersections by elementary schools. Much better use of money than building a new high school : )
Using tile instead of polished concrete shows how little thought went into the cuts. Polished concrete: wet mop. Tile: mop/strip/wax/mop/strip/wax, ad infinitum, at least until the tile falls apart and has to be replaced. Besides, what are they planning to put the tile over?