CARIBOU, Maine — After running through a checklist of 30 criteria, a consultant to the area school district indicated that the best site to build a new school is on a parcel of land where Teague Park Elementary is located.
Items such as geographic location, parcel size and shape, public sewer and water access and proximity to community facilities were given rating ranges of 0-10 or 0-20 by PDT Architects with a high score of 330 points possible. The Teague school parcel received a score of 257 bringing it to the top of the list of six potential sites examined. The Teague site was dinged because of demolition costs and for not being within the comprehensive plan designated growth area.
The location that received the lowest rating was a potential lot off of South Main Street.
Lyndon Keck, founding partner of PDT Architects, and PDT’s Alan Kuniholm presented the firm’s site-rating matrix to the Regional School Unit 39 building committee on June 25. The firm also presented a comprehensive report analysis on building a new school to replace three aging elementary and middle schools instead of pursuing extensive renovations.
The analysis covered Teague Park Elementary, Hilltop Elementary and Caribou Middle School.
“The three buildings included as part of this assessment are 89 years old, 65 years old and 55 years old,” which puts them past the 40-year lifecycle mark for commercial buildings, the report states.
The combined annual energy costs for the three schools is about $184,257. The estimated energy cost for a new Caribou Elementary School could be around $72,000, “a net savings of roughly $112,000 for the first year of operation,” the report states. “This results in an energy savings of over $1.4 million over the next 10 years or over $5 million over the next 25 years.”
The report also points out that with savings in maintenance, operation and energy costs, “PDT has estimated there also would be savings resulting from a new consolidated building rated to salary savings.
Two obvious areas where such savings could be realized are in food preparation and in custodial and maintenance operations, according to the report.
“Presently, four custodial staff serve the Caribou Middle School, two at Hilltop Elementary and two at Teague park for a total of eight,” the report states. “PDT estimates a new consolidated building would require a custodial staff of five people resulting in an annual saving of approximately $123,000.”
Each school has two people on food service staff, while PDT estimates food service staff for a consolidated school could be reduced to four or five people resulting in an annual savings of $22,000 to $44,000.
PDT said the RSU, which serves the communities of Caribou, Limestone and Stockholm, would need to continue to work on the evaluation to determine whether there are any other savings that might occur in staffing as a result of building consolidation.
PDT closed a summary of the report by stating, “PDT Architects finds that none of the three buildings is suitable for major renovation that would allow the buildings to be continued for another 40 to 50 years.”
Updates on the capital improvement project are available online at RSU39.org.