(CHADRON)-Chadron Public school superintendent Caroline Winchester approached the Chadron city council on Monday evening with a request to cost share the gutter portion of a drainage project at the Chadron Middle School. Winchester said the hope is that the completed project will provide a safer place for parents and guardians to drop off and pick up students before and after school. She asked the council to consider funding nearly $21,000, or 1/3 the cost of the project. The total estimated cost of the project is approximately $60,000.

Pubic works director Milo Rust said the requested money was not a part of this year’s budget, so they would have to come from a contingency fund or be allotted in next year’s budget. Council member Donny Grantham expressed concern about using money for projects that has not been budgeted. “I think it’s very important that we stick to our budget, he said. “We were able to stick to our budget, cause we’re going to take the money out of next year. So it should work out for both. We’re helping them out; we’re trying to work with the school. We want to work with all the other agencies that we can. But we also want to only do what we’re supposed to do. We don’t want to start paying for things that somebody else should pay for. But in this case, I think that part of the street is for us to take care of.”

Engineer Dave Coe said in a letter that he felt the project being considered benefited the whole community rather than a private landowner, and therefore should be a joint effort. He also reminded council members of a project several years ago in which the school cooperated financially with the city to replace the street and gutter system in the 600 block of Cedar.

That being said, Grantham said the council decided to chip in half of the help the school requested. “I’m not sure where we’re going to be with next year’s budget, so I think we’re just committed to $10,500,” he said. “That’s what we’re willing to do at this point.”

Rust said eventually the city would have needed to renovate the area that the school is wishing to repair. “Within the next 10 years, we’d have probably had to address that problem,” he said. “If we’d have had to do that by ourselves, it would have cost us for the full amount of replacing that curb and gutter line. This is a good partnership with the schools and the city.”

The school plans to begin the project sometime after the June 11^th school board meeting.

 

(Questions? Comments? E-mail roxie@chadrad.com.)

(Copyright 2012 KCSR/Chadrad Communications, Inc. May not be reproduced in any form without permission.)