OSWEGO – In the first Oswego City School District Board of Education meeting since the end of the 2020-21 school year, Heather DelConte was re-elected Board of Education President for a third straight year.
Along with DelConte, Tom Ciappa was elected Vice President, taking over for Kathleen Allen who retired from the board after this school year. Sean Ohnmacht was also sworn in, while the new student member was named to be Zachary DeMott.
Looking ahead to the next academic year, almost every recommended action was passed, which include approving the purchasing policy, appointing various positions such as tax collector and asbestos designee, as well as approving the Executive Director of Business and Finance to invest district funds from general funds to financial institutions that meet already established criteria.
The board also established its three committees that were all approved. These consist of three board members on each one. The policy committee consists of Pam Dowd, Lisa Glidden and DelConte. The facilities committee is Lynda Sereno, McKenzie and Ciappa. The final one, the audit committee, will consist of Dowd, Glidden and the newest board member Ohnmacht.
The one resolution that was tabled was the hiring of Ferrara Fiorenza PC as the district’s special counsel. DelConte asked to make this a separate subject from the general and bonds counsels, as she would like to discuss pricing and the “chain of communication” when it comes to the counsel.
She added that the district’s current special counsel will continue its coverage until the end of July, giving the board the opportunity to converse on the special counsel at the next meeting. Jim McKenzie agreed, motioning to table the approval of the special counsel.
“Jim made a motion to table our discussion about special counsel so we fully understand what it is that we are voting on, so we fully understand the contract [and] if the rates have gone up,” DelConte said.
During Dr. Mathis Calvin III’s Superintendent Report, the board was informed of some bad news regarding the soil remediation project at Oswego High School. According to Peter Marsension, who is an executive at Construction Associates LLC, there is muck-like soil in the South and Northeast ends of the field.
This is a problem because construction workers cannot place equipment on top of it to lay the two feet of cover material that is supposed to go above that area. According to Marension, these two spots are the only problem areas and have three possible solutions.
“There are three options we are looking at right now, one of them is basically just hauling all of it out and having it refilled with [that cover material] that we are using for the rest of the project,” Marension said. “We are not sure that that’s the best thing because we are trying to figure out the cost because all of that material needs to be hauled to the landfill, which becomes expensive. The second option is taking the material we have there and mixing it with a quick lyme dust or a cementitious lyme dust to try and dry it out to support the [materials] … The third option that we have is to put a geogrid across the top of the muck layer that might support the weight of the equipment. Again, we are trying to get the price of the geogrid, how much we are going to need and if the product is readily available to put across there.”
The board was rather concerned with the “muck” but it seems to be naturally occurring, according to Marsension. The goal for construction is to harden the soil with some sort of material, like the lyme powder, which will allow the covers to go on top of it without sinking in. One issue that Marension discussed is that a lot of construction materials are in “short supply” due to the pandemic. Marsension expects the soil to rehydrate once the construction is done, which is not necessarily problematic.
“We are looking at a lyme dust, a natural material that … will absorb that and then go back to its natural state,” Marension said. “We don’t necessarily have to have it so hard that you can get a building over it, we are just trying to get it hard enough to get equipment on it, to put the two foot cover over it. That two feet of cover is bridging the material … to get our mat that says ‘do not dig,’ our two feet of cover and then six inches of top soil.”
Calvin expects the construction team to meet this coming week to find the best and most cost-effective solution to bring to the next board meeting.
The final major point of discussion was the track facility at the middle school, a topic of conversation the last several meetings. According to Calvin, Rhonda Bullard, the district’s athletic director, and the crew in charge of the track capital project listed four major needs.
Bullard and Calvin said that the biggest needs are the steeplechase barrier package, new high jump mats, a track crossing mat to protect the track when equipment is moved over it and a triple/long jump pit cover to keep rain and other stuff out of the sand pit. These big four will cost roughly $109,000 which is nearly a 50% decrease in price. Calvin expects these can be bought before students return from the summer vacation.
“In the next school year’s budget, there is some equipment money in the line for Rhonda, and we can use that [for the steeplechase package],” Calvin said. “We can still get them all before the kids come back … We did look at the financing and we found a better way [so we do not need to move money around].”
For the remainder of the meeting, all personnel decisions including resignations, terminations and new hires were approved.
Agenda items and documents from the meeting can be found here. The full meeting can be viewed in the video link provided above.
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