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Examining the referendum: Lighting and audiovisual work
Part 3 of 4
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On Tuesday, November 3, Boscobel School District residents will be asked to vote on a school referendum requesting $6.9 million for repairs and upgrades to the district’s buildings.

We are covering each section in installments. Part one covered the heating and cooling systems and was run in the Sept. 10 issue of the Boscobel Dial. Part two was run in the Oct. 1 issue and covered exterior repairs and upgrades and plumbing.

Part 3

Lighting & Audiovisual

Lighting and audiovisual upgrades as proposed by H&H Energy Services would come in at $874,179 and include replacing most of the school’s fluorescent lights, outdoor lights, while also upgrading audio systems and stage lighting.

The lights portion of the project would transition the schools’ T8 fluorescent fixtures to 2’x4’ LED fixtures indoors. Outdoor lighting would also be converted to LED.

“Indoors, that will be a 40-60% energy savings, while extending the life of the light fixture,” said Adam Laurent of H&H Energy. “The bulbs should last 100,000 or about 30 years based on average usage. The other benefit is in appearance. This is a very bright light, less yellow than the fluorescents, and no flicker.”

For the outdoor lights, Laurent projects greater savings of 70 to 75-percent less energy used while getting better coverage and light quality.

The outdoor lights replaced would be the outdoor wall mounted lights and the pole lights, excluding the football field, for which there are no LED replacements available.

Lighting would account for $644,447 of the lighting and audiovisual estimate. The remaining $229,732 would purchase new projectors, audio systems, and microphones for the gymnasiums and high school cafeteria along with new lighting for the high school stage.

“Some of the stage lighting would be with LED lamps, providing better color with far less heat, and a much longer life span,” Laurent said.

Safety & Communications

Life safety and communications is a smaller budget, coming in at $333,421. A portion of the life safety and communications project is mandated.

The fire alarm system at the middle and high school has to be upgraded to meet ADA code requirements, according to Bill McGann of OMNI Technologies.

The new system will cost $140,154 according to the H&H Energy budget.

The fire systems in the districts other three school buildings are already compliant.

The referendum project list also proposes replacing the clock systems in all four buildings, repairing the paging system at the Rock, and replacing the intercom system in the middle school and high school building for $142,046.

“A lot of the clocks are not working or have been replaced with regular clocks so they are no longer part of the system,” McGann said. “The new clocks would be networked so that the time was the same in all of the buildings and would require less checking and no individual setting.”

The intercom and bell system in the middle and high school building is obsolete, according to McGann. The intercom systems in the other district buildings were upgraded a few years ago when their fire alarm systems were upgraded. This would finish the overhaul of that system, McGann said.

The existing intercom headend will be replaced and all new speakers and cabling will be installed throughout the facility. The new system would also allow calls to individual classrooms from any phone or from the intercom master station.

The final component of the life safety and communications project is the installation of a back-up generator and dry fire suppression system in the district’s server room.

“There are currently water sprinklers in the room, which need to be replaced with a dry chemical system,” McGann said. “The school has a couple of hundred grand in equipment that would be ruined if the (current) sprinklers went off.”

A chematron aragonite fire suppression system will be installed in its place, keeping the server equipment from being ruined in case of a fire.

The final installment of this series will cover financing and tax impacts.