Mid-June’s raging weather caused significant damage to the roof of the auditorium at Weldon Elementary. Combined with a faulty thermostat that kept the building frigid in high humidity, mold has moved in.
It’s sharing space with asbestos in the acoustic insulation, which means a pending $600,000 refurbishment will mitigate multiple problems in one go.
The district’s insurance will cover $100,000 of that pricetag, according to Matt McIntosh, director of grounds and maintenance.
“Best we can determine is in June during the storm we had a portion of debris that got peeled back. We didn’t inspect that because we don’t have access to that roof,” he said, “there’s no ladder that can go up there.
“Then, we had a runaway thermostat. It dropped to 61 degrees in that building with all of that humidity.”
Months later, mold buildup has to be scraped off the walls and other surfaces, carpets have to be cleaned and seats have to be refreshed among other tasks.
“That’s before we can actually start working,” he said. “We need a whole new roof. It’s just been patched… At this point we want to go in and get rid of all the asbestos in the building.”
After the clean-up and asbestos mitigation, McIntosh recommends installing a 3-foot acoustical drop-ceiling, which costs about $20,000 less than new acoustic spray, improves acoustics overall and should lead to other cost efficiencies down the road.
“It’s probably going to be a three-month project once we get everybody on board,” McIntosh noted. “We actually have the auditorium locked down now.”
With a nod from the board, the project will come back before them soon as a fund balance request, likely a disaster declaration, in order to move forward with the repairs and mitigation.
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