WESTFIELD – The School Committee voted Monday night to approve a request for state funds to replace the roofs at Paper Mill and Munger Hill elementary schools.
The committee approved a Statement of Interest (SOI), the document required by the Massachusetts School Building Authority to begin its review and prioritization of funding requests.
That SOI will be presented to the City Council Thursday night, which must also vote to approve the request. That vote is required of the city’s legislative branch, because at some point it will have to approve a bond for the roof replacement work.
If the MSBA approves funding for the project, the state agency will provide 62.74 percent of the project funding.
Frank Maher, director of operations, maintenance and food services, said the two roofs are rubber membrane structures that were installed when the two sister school buildings were constructed 20 years ago.
“These are identical schools,” Maher said. “On June 1, a weather event (tornado) took the roof off the kindergarten section of the Munger Hill School.”
“As part of that repair process we hired Tighe & Bond (Engineering) to perform a full inspection of the (Munger Hill) roof,” Maher said. “What they found was that the building structure is sound, but that the (membrane) roof is near the end of its useful life.”
“They determined that algae is eating into the rubber, causing pin holes,” Maher said. “We then asked them to check out Paper Mill and they found the same problem.”
Maher said that he filed an emergency statement of intent following the June 1 tornado, but MSBA action was deferred until the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had completed is inspection and assessment of the tornado-related damage.
“I had hoped to get a few more years out of those roofs,” Maher said. “I had programmed replacement for 2015, but now we have to move that up.”
Maher said that if the MSBA approved the funding, he will have the contract ready for the work to be performed next summer.
Maher estimated the cost of the two roof replacement projects at $2.1 million, but noted that roof work at the Southampton and Highland elementary schools came in substantially under cost projections.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik said he “anticipates that we will be in position for this work.”
“If we did not have the tornado, we would have not known about this problem until we started to have leaks,” he said.
Maher said the application deadline is the end of next week. The committee voted to approve that SOI, but will conduct a special session next Monday, (Nov. 21) to approve the minutes of the Monday night session as part of the SOI documentation.
