South Range awards contract for new bus garage

October 28, 2015 at 12:00a.m.

By ROBERT CONNELLY

NORTH LIMA

The South Range Board of Education has approved a contract for a new bus garage.

The cost, about $162,000, will be paid by the last of the local fund initiative through the new schools bond, and funds the district received from the city of Salem for a tax increment financing (TIF) district.

“It was good timing,” said Dennis Dunham, South Range superintendent, on Tuesday. “Having the two [funds] together enabled us to get there.”

In 2007, South Range voters approved a 28-year, 7.9-mill bond issue to raise $18.3 million for the building of a new schools complex, or 48 percent of the cost. The state provided nearly $20 million, or 52 percent.

South Range received $60,675 from Salem recently after settling a legal dispute over TIF funds centered on a Home Depot development. There was land in Green Township, within the South Range school district’s boundaries, that was annexed for that project.

The district will receive between $6,000 and $7,000 for the final year of the 10-year TIF next year.

Classical Construction of Apple Creek was unanimously approved by the board as the contractor for the new bus garage. The district previously had rejected bids on a new bus garage due to high bid prices. The first time it went out to bid, the lowest offer was about $220,000, or double the earmarked LFI money.

This new garage will go where a shed currently sits across the gravel drive from the South Range Board of Education offices, which are both across state Route 46 from the schools complex.

That shed will need to be torn down first, Dunham said, and district officials hope garage construction could begin by the end of November or start of December.

The design was reworked from the first round of bids to lower costs. That means instead of having an office area and a restroom, there will be two pull-through bay doors and a third one for buses to pull into for longer-term work. There will be caps on sanitary lines and other utilities for future expansion of the garage.

The district currently spends $6,000 a year to rent the school’s old bus garage in Greenford.