The new Jefferson Village School building did not open as scheduled Sept. 6. Although the building is scheduled to open Thurs., Sept. 8, officials said a number of life safety systems have not yet received final approval.
As of press time Sept. 7, the issues hinge primarily on the building’s backup generator, which has still not been tested and approved, said Jefferson Code Enforcement Officer Stan Waltz. As Code Enforcement Officer, Waltz is responsible for inspecting the building and issuing the permit to allow students and teachers to enter the building.
The generator powers all the building’s life safety systems – fire alarms, sprinklers, emergency lights – in the event of an emergency. Until Sept. 2, the generator was scheduled for installation and testing on Sept. 12: six days after the first scheduled day of school.
The installation has been rushed, and officials, including Waltz, expect the generator to be online by noon on Sept. 7, and the school to be open, and safe, on Sept. 8.
Updates on the opening of JVS will be provided on The Lincoln County News website as soon as details become available.
School and district officials, town officials, and Oak Point Associates, the architects hired to design and oversee the project, all said they believed the generator was going to be ready the week before the school opened.
Tyler Barter, an architect at Oak Point Associates and the project manager for the JVS building, said the contractor, Bowman Constructors, provided detailed monthly updates on their progress. At no point did those updates indicate that the generator would not be ready on time, Barter said.
“Everyone was under the impression that [the generator] was going to be ready last week,” Barter said in a telephone interview Sept. 6.
Barter, JVS Principal Pete Gallace, AOS 93 Supt. Steve Bailey, and JVS School Board Chairman Bob Westrich all said they were not told until Sept. 2 that the generator, and therefore the school, would not be ready by Sept. 6.
Gallace described the situation as “quite frustrating” and expressed his condolences for not being able to tell parents sooner. Gallace and other school representatives called every JVS parent on Sept. 2 and 3 to inform them of the delay.
“All along, the message we were getting from the contractor was that the school would be ready,” Gallace said Sept. 6.
Gallace said if he had known there was a good possibility the school would not open on time, he would have informed parents sooner. In addition to saving parents a last minute preparation for several more days of summer vacation, “it would have saved me a huge headache,” Gallace said.
Kevin Bowman, president of Bowman Constructors, said the generator hookup and testing was rescheduled to Sept. 12 to allow more time for work on other aspects of the building.
Bowman said his company has built “many, many” schools, and they did not know that the generator was necessary for the building to open. Most schools do not have generators, and Bowman said in this case “local authorities decided to make it a requirement.”
“We knew from day one this project was going to be tight,” Bowman said. In order to meet deadline, the generator was pushed back, he said. “We apologize for these final snafus, but in the big picture all went well.”
Mary Beth Van Keuren, the owner’s representative for the project, described the generator as “a small detail that got overlooked” in the rush of the last week of the project. An owner’s representative is a professional engineer brought in to serve as liaison between the contractor and local officials.
During a telephone interview Sept. 7, Van Keuren reiterated statements made by several others that until Sept. 2, they were under the impression the generated was scheduled to be online for the Sept. 6 opening. “A lot of people were involved, and it never came up,” she said.
“At most jobs, the generator is not usually critical,” Van Keuren said. “In this case it was.”
Several school officials pointed out that the old Jefferson Village School had neither a generator nor a sprinkler system, which may have contributed to the lack of attention paid to the generator in the new building.
Bailey said school officials left that meeting believing that much needed to be done, but that the school would still open on time.
On Aug. 31, Waltz toured the school and found “a lot of little things” unacceptable – including an incomplete kitchen, unfinished lights and switches, and unfinished interior construction such as windowsills – in addition to the fire safety systems still not in place, Waltz said.
The night of Waltz’s inspection, the school hosted an ice cream social for parents, teachers and students. About 300 attended, said School Board Chairman Bob Westrich.
“It was obvious that people were still working,” but no one indicated that the building might not be ready, Westrich said.
“It would have been easy” to warn parents that the opening might be delayed at that time, “but there was nothing to indicate we should be worried,” he said. “Everybody just had a good time.”
Later that night, a Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputy patrolling the area noticed that the fire alarm was going off in the building. It did not call out to emergency responders because it had not yet been tied into a broadcast system.
Before becoming the Jefferson Fire Chief, Walter Morris served for many years as a licensed code and fire safety inspector for several towns outside New York City. On Sept. 1, Morris inspected the building. That visit resulted in “several pages of notes and concerns,” he said.
“None of the fire life safety systems were in operating condition,” Morris said in a telephone interview on Sept. 2.
The following day Morris and Waltz met with school officials and representatives of or Bowman and Oak Point to discuss the Sept. 6 opening.
“They started to address some of the concerns” on Sept. 2, Morris said.
Throughout the day Sept. 2, school officials, the contract and the architects reportedly scrambled to find ways to get the school open on time.
They moved up the installation of the generator to Sept. 7. The fire alarms were being connected to a broadcast system, and the whole alarm system double-checked, “as we speak” at around 4 p.m. on Sept. 2, Waltz said.
A representative of the builders contacted the State Fire Marshall’s Office to discuss ways to open the building without the backup generator and sprinkler in place. Assistant State Fire Marshall Rich McCarthy confirmed that conversation.
The option that officials discussed with Morris was to open the building only during daylight hours, so the emergency lights would be unnecessary, and have a firefighter at the school at all times with a fire truck ready to pump water into the sprinkler system.
Morris informed them that the Jefferson Fire Department is a volunteer organization, and it is not capable of providing a firefighter and truck. Officials began to discuss requesting help from another local fire department, Morris said.
At that time, Morris decided to remove himself from the approval process, he said.
“God forbid there is a fire, we’ll be there to put it out, like we’re trained to do,” Morris said. “At this point, it’s up to the Fire Marshall to determine when it’s safe.”
Waltz declared shortly thereafter that he would not issue his approval for the school to open Sept. 6.
Typically, local fire chiefs inspect new school buildings’ safety systems and advise the code enforcement officer. The State Fire Marshall’s Office must approve plans before construction begins, but does not inspect public schools once they are built, said Assistant State Fire Marshall Rich McCarthy.
However, at the request of local officials, the State Fire Marshall’s Office will inspect buildings and provide an opinion on their safety. In the late afternoon on Sept. 2, McCarthy said he had blocked out Sept. 6 “in anticipation of being asked to do an inspection.”
Although he had not received a formal request from town officials to inspect the building at that point, he said he expected one because “I feel like I’m getting two different stories: one from the architects and one from town officials,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy inspected the building for safety on Sept. 6 and said the building is safe to open once the generator is online and has been tested, and the grounds outside the building’s exits are improved.
As of press time Sept. 7, the earthwork required at the exits was underway and expected to be ready for Sept. 8, Waltz said.
Although Waltz said on Sept. 6 that the interior of the building will be ready for students when the generator is online, on Sept. 2 he and Morris expressed more doubt about the completeness of the school.
“The bottom line is, that is a construction site, not a school,” Morris said at the time.
Morris, whose youngest child graduated from JVS last year, said if he had kids at the school he would have been very concerned about them entering the building Sept. 6.
He called into question the actions of school officials on Sept. 2, saying they were rushing to get students into the school before it was ready. He described a scene from Sept. 2, which he said illustrated the problem.
The cafeteria in the new building is connected to the gymnasium by a stage – a several-hundred-square-foot opening between the two rooms. On Sept. 2, workers were sanding in the stage and gym. At the same time, others were preparing the cafeteria for students.
“They were in there laying out the knives, forks and spoons that our kids are going to be using, and they’re getting covered in wood dust,” Morris said.
The silverware has since been cleaned and put away, Waltz said on Sept. 6.
Supt. Steve Bailey – in a statement that echoed those of many involved in the project – said that school officials “knew all along it was going to come down to the 11th hour” but they believed the building was going to be ready.
Bailey has been AOS 93 Superintendent since July.
During most of construction, school officials were kept up to date on progress on the building via detailed daily updates from Clerk of the Works Brook Plummer, an employee of Oak Point.
Westrich said he received 239 consecutive daily progress reports – with the exception of one week when Plummer was on vacation – until Aug. 4, when they suddenly ceased. Westrich and Gallace both said they inquired about the lack of updates.
“I never got a straight answer on that,” Gallace said.
About a month before school started, the project was 84 percent complete, according to the last report.
Barter said that as an Oak Point employee, Plummer’s responsibilities shifted during the last month of construction, and the daily updates creased for two reasons: the Oak Point supervisors the updates were intended for spent more time on site during the last month; and Plummer was busy with other tasks during that time.
“When you’re down to the wire, some of the formalities fall to the side,” Barter said.
Ultimately, it is only the backup generator preventing Waltz from approving occupancy of the building and with or without daily updates, Oak Point – along with school and town officials – did not know the generator would not be ready, Barter said.
