Triton School Board Receives Building Project Financial Report

Triton School board members received a financial report about the school corporation’s building project when they met this week.

They’re still in the preliminary stages of the project according to Superintendent Donna Burroughs. She said at Monday’s meeting, Business Manager Tom McFarland provided a summary of all the fees that have been paid to various individuals involved in the project process such as surveyors, architects and attorneys.

Burroughs mentioned that she’s been told whenever schools tackle these kinds of building projects, they typically rack up around $150,000 in fees. She said their fees amount to approximately $50,000 so far.

She said, “Most people don’t know about all the things that have to happen before you get to the shovel ready, building kind of stuff. It has to be surveyed, you have to line up the financing.” Superintendent Burroughs continued, “You have to set up a building corporation because it’s a building project that will cost more than two million dollars and then you have to have it assessed and so all of those things have been going on and that’s where the fees have gone.”

Proposed elements of this multi-million dollar project include high school roof repairs and a new gymnasium as well as a new heating and cooling system at the elementary school.

Burroughs said that a more concrete plan will be presented in a meeting at the end of the month. She said the next step will be to begin the bidding process to get the project that much closer to “turning dirt and building something.”