July 3, 2008

Board recants on track
District will repair old instead of building new

By ED COX
of The Dalles Chronicle

     North Wasco School District 21won’t spend $550,000 to build a new middle school track after all, but will fix up the two tracks it has instead — and likely for less than that amount.
     That was the result of Wednesday’s special board meeting, where the board unanimously approved Ernie Blatz’s motion to direct staff to renovate the track at the high school’s Wahtonka campus and upgrade the Thompson Street track to a “usable condition.”
     That came after a unanimous vote to rescind a March 20 motion to pursue construction of a new track at The Dalles Middle School.
     In between came a motion by board chair Brian Stahl to direct staff to make sure there is a middle school track program unless otherwise authorized by the board.
     Stahl said that motion, which passed 4-1 with one abstention before the resolution on the tracks, was intended both to address concerns about the program disappearing without the board’s knowledge and to allow administrative staff the flexibility to look at different options for use of existing facilities.
     But the motion to fix the two tracks essentially superseded it, giving new marching orders to facilities director Dennis Whitehouse, who had finished the design phase and was about to accept material bids for the new middle school track.
     “It’s not too late to stop that project,” he told the board during its discussion.
After hearing testimony that was quite evenly divided between proponents and opponents of the new track, board members seemed eager to fall on the side of fiscal prudence and show that while they valued athletics, they also understood the message they perceived from the larger public: “Take care of what you’ve got.”
     And they seemed to follow the logic of Whitehouse, who noted that having two viable eight-lane tracks — instead of a single six-lane one at the middle school — might better serve the district over the long term, as it continues to consider building a new high school at the Wahtonka site.
     No dollar figure was attached to the motion, though Blatz’s initial suggestion was to split the $550,000 total between the two of them and make them both “right.”
     Whitehouse had estimated he might need $300,000 at each site for full renovations. But with the revision of the motion to call for a mere fix of the Thompson track, he said the final cost should be significantly less than that.
     He will report back to the board with numbers after he has consulted with contractors on the Thompson track. Both tracks suffer from a deteriorating sub-structure, and the surface at Thompson is in “terrible condition,” according to Whitehouse.