Editorial Column: Let’s Get Out of First Gear

Chinook School in southwestern Washington

Reprinted from March 9, 2010 by request

As I drove past Chinook Elementary School in southwestern Washington State last weekend, I suddenly remembered the wet night that my gentle Dad burst angrily through the front door, rain dripping from his 1950s hat.

“What’s the matter Dad?” My college-age brother asked.

“That darn car was stuck in first gear all the way from Tacoma to Seattle!” he said. This was before I learned to drive, and didn’t understand how being forced to go a maximum of 15 miles an hour was such a handicap. He got home safely, didn’t he? Our 1956 two-tone Chevy, with the doors on the driver’s side held shut with wire, hadn’t quit on him, it just slowed him down on his way home from a job.

Dad was frequently unemployed in those days, and having a job – or a car – at all was the big deal, not how fast it went or how good it looked.

I imagined similar thoughts were put before the people of Chinook some years ago, while the school was still populated with elementary students.  And it seems as if similar thoughts are concerning people on Orcas Island who are faced with a sizable school district bond.

People say we should only repair what’s broken: the plumbing in the elementary school, the heating that wastes tens of thousands of dollars each year, things like that. We shouldn’t replace buildings that  were built 30 years ago with new buildings, they say. We should fix them.

That would be like replacing the ‘56 Chevy’s doors (at sizeable cost) without addressing the larger transmission issue; it would mean spending thousands of dollars on a “fix” rather than $30 a month for a decade to drive a car that is more fuel-efficient, more road-worthy, and more of a “tool” to enable my Dad to work.

Most of the “new” construction is actually replacement construction for school buildings that engineers have told us need to be upgraded for safety reasons; the new construction is also to provide a building for the vocational (Career and Technical) education, or CTE, classes that prepare our students for careers in the growing fields of applied physics, computer technology, marine technology, agricultural, construction and carpentry trades.

Maintenance of the school buildings is an issue. And maybe my Dad’s car would have run better if its previous owners had kept up oil and transmission fluid levels. But they didn’t, and in the meantime, the cost of fuel increased, the efficacy of the heating and cooling systems improved, and the regulations on pollutant emissions increased.

The School District had years of cutting maintenance expenses and deferring maintenance in order to balance the school’s general budget (in 2006, there was only $5,000 in the district’s reserve fund – it is now at $341,000, up $100,000 from last year). What this means is that the OISD Board, assisted by the Orcas Island Education Foundation (OIEF), and the Budget Advisory Committee (BAC) have rebuilt the district’s financial structure responsibly and responsively.

Deferred maintenance, like a dangerously low reserve fund, will no longer be considered as a policy option by this school district board. The proposed school bond provides the capital (investment) outlay for a contractual maintenance plan as well as for energy savings and efficiency.

The bond, as currently written by OISD Board resolution, calls for the authority to request funds in two stages. This means that the Board may ask for the full amount they’re authorized to ask for in the first stage, but then they may well ask for a lesser amount in the second phase.

It’s been known to happen that capital projects come in under-budget: the replacement Tacoma Narrows Bridge was completed last year, under budget and before deadline; the oil field fires in Iraq following the first Persian Gulf War in the 1990s were extinguished far ahead of what was thought possible. Here on Orcas, we do the “impossible” rather frequently – purchasing Turtleback Mountain, outlawing jet skis and plastic bags, producing healthy reserve funds for our institutions, building outdoor stages with local effort, and operating cemetery and port districts at below the authorized tax dollars.

New construction business models have introduced the General Contractor Construction Manager (GCCM), rather than the design-bid-build process in which the lowest bidder (who may well be an off-island company) contracts for the entire job.  In the GCCM method, the contractor is there throughout the building process to help mitigate issues in design.

Board President Scott Lancaster has been researching the GCCM model for the last five years.  The Board hopes to write into the contract that local contractors have priority consideration, if not for the General Contractor position, but also for the sub-contracting jobs that the bond pays for.  This is why the bond has been described as a “Local Stimulus” investment that will employ islanders.

And for those over age 61 and those disabled who will “never” see an increase in their income, if that income is below $35,000, our County’s Treasury provides that their property value will be “frozen” and they can be exempted from paying any of a new bond amount. (See accompanying story “Low-income Seniors and Disabled Qualify for Bond ‘Tax’ Exemption”).

Did you know that the kids at school are building new cars? Julian Glasser, class of ’09, retrofitted an engine to use biodiesel fuel. This year, another senior is working to re-define the car as our primary mode of transportation.

This week, Kari Schuh, the Career and Technical Education Director, and Superintendent Barbara Kline are meeting with State school officials to discuss local “satellites” of vocational instruction centers. Maybe within our lifetime, Orcas students will “invent” a new mode of transportation that ends our dependence on foreign oil and high prices at the gasoline pump, much as Lakeside School students Paul Allen and Bill Gates, Jr. built a new information communications system in the last generation.

That will never happen, you say? I remember my Dad saying, “I’ll never have a car that works,” and my Mom replying, “Never is a long, long, time.”

My Mom also went to work the following year, and two years later, bought one of those weird little Volkswagen “Bugs” – on time. She considered it an investment in her livelihood, and in our future.