BY KARISSA MILLER
The Iredell-Statesville Schools Board of Education has received a preliminary plan that would consolidate both central office locations and all other service sites into one location.
During the recent committee of the whole meeting, I-SS Chief Technology, Facilities and Maintenance Officer Tim Ivey said he was asked to develop a plan and see if it was feasible for I-SS to be able to consolidate all of the current central services to facilities and planning building.
The consolidation would move all services housed at facilities and planning, located 350 Old Murdock Road in Troutman. These include:
• Race Street administrative central office;
• ADR Educational Center (central office);
• Unity Information Technology and AIG Department;
• Facility and Planning (already at Facility and Planning location); and
• Child Nutrition (already at Facility and Planning location)
Ivey said each department was for information about their staffing and input about they type of office space they would need so that the architects could develop a rough draft outline of the project.
Ivey showed the board two conceptual plan options:
The first option would include demolition of the mezzanine in the upper conference room and adding a building outside. The estimated cost is $9 million.
The second option would renovate the mezzanine. Ivey said the existing outside structure of the building would remain the same. The estimated cost is $8.15 million.
The plan calls for renovating the current child nutrition office and Ivey’s office in the technology space to house human resources, the superintendent’s office and the finance department.
Ivey said that the savings from the reduction of redundancy, drive time and employees being at one place would save the district roughly $1.5 million annually. This would equate to $7.5 million over a five-year period.
“This is just a planning document at this point in time. The next step would be talking about where funding would come from,” Ivey said, emphasizing that this is not a voting item.
Board member Bill Howell voiced his support for the consolidation.
“I think it’s time for this board to make a decision — I encourage us to make a move in this direction,” Howell said.
Board member Sam Kennington mentioned that some of the district’s important school projects, such as Statesville High’s CTE building, are currently on hold. Kennington said he won’t support a new central service building plan until those projects are set in motion.
Ivey said in response, “This project would hopefully be paid for out of the sale of property we currently own. So we would not be taking off anything that would do with the schools to improve our costs for central services.”
Chairman Martin Page said that the board has thrown good money into bad buildings. He said that the board needs to look at the long-range picture.
“I think at some point in time the buildings that are our employees are working in are going to tell us that we have to move whether we’re ready to or not. We’re about to that point in some of those locations,” Ivey said.