NHS Track Restoration To Cost Less Than Expected

By Larissa Lytwyn

The Board of Education has approved Dalton Construction Company’s $38,000 bid to restore Newtown High School’s aging track, approximately $12,000 less than Business Director Ron Bienkowski had anticipated. The action came at the July 6 meeting of the board.

The project has been listed as a $50,000 budgeted item in the board’s July 1-effective 2004-05 budget.

According to a July 2 memo to Superintendent of Schools Evan Pitkoff, Mr Bienkowski indicated that the restoration was “the second highest school priority project” following the high school expansion project.

Dalton Construction Company is the same company that originally installed the track.

The project is scheduled to commence the week of July 19 and will take approximately three and a half weeks to complete.

First, the poorest quality strips of track will be removed and replaced with fresh liquid rubber. The track will then be repainted and numbered.

While undergoing its repairs, the track will be completely closed and unusable.

During the July 6 board meeting, Chair Elaine McClure praised the project’s unexpected savings.

“You can never quite tell how the [budgeting] will go,” she said, “and this shows that what we have right now is a working budget.”