An internal look of the three concrete walkways at Warren County Middle School has shown their condition is worse than first suspected.
“Let me hand this out,” said Director of Schools Bobby Cox to members of the county Education Committee in regard to a letter from Upland Design Group about the walkways.
“I don’t think it’s good news,” said Commissioner Terry Bell.
Cox replied, “No, it’s not. It’s not good news. This is from Upland Design. As you know, we’ve been looking at the pedestrian bridges at the middle school. We took concrete core samples of those pedestrian bridges. They took those samples and cut them into microscopic concrete slides and reviewed them.”
According to the letter from Upland Design architect Allen Hill, work to stabilize the bridges is estimated to cost $240,000. The improvement will be a temporary fix, estimated to give the existing bridges approximately 15 more years before they have to be replaced. Upland estimates complete replacement of the bridges will cost $750,000.
“The last word I heard from you is they were safe,” said Commissioner Morris Bond.
Cox said the bridges are safe, but further investigation by Upland Design found problems on the inside that can’t be seen from the outside.
“He told me they were safe and they are safe, but they need some attention,” said Cox, who says he’s already looking into cost-saving measures. “I’ve talked to them about tearing them down and putting up steel or any other option that’s more cost-effective and give us more life. We have to have them because they are a means of egress. The fire marshal will shut down the building if we don’t have egress.”
Commissioner Diane Starkey asked when the work needs to be done.
“It needs to be done pretty quick,” said Cox. “We don’t want a bridge falling. We are starting to look at it now. We have an engineer coming to look at it.”
Starkey asked if the school system has funding or if the county will be asked to pay for it.
“We have $900,000 in capital projects,” said Cox. “If we pay for that then something else we have on our list of things to do won’t get done. There’s more things to do than there’s money to do them.”
Commissioner Scott Rubley asked if consideration has been given to extending the buildings, which would enlarge them and remove the need for the walkways.
“We’ve looked at building costs but it’s about triple, from what we’ve seen,” said Cox. “We can look at that again. We’ll look at all the options.”
The discussion was information only. No decision was made on renovating or replacing the concrete walkways.