Kimberly Moritz BlogPosts

The latest on our DOT inspections for the buses? We’re headed to Cattaraugus/Little Valley. Thanks to Superintendent Peterson and his BOE for allowing his transportation director to host us for our inspections. And thanks to Superintendent Rinaldi and his BOE at Gowanda for considering the same as a back up for us. After traveling to Falconer for about two years for our inspections, they’ve decided that enough is enough. That led me to ask our neighbor with an excellent DOT passing rate and a brand new facility to allow us to bring our buses to his garage–starting July 20 and agreed to for one year at which time they’ll review the pros and cons.

Readers will remember that the Department of Transportation inspects our buses and have been unwilling to inspect here at Randolph due to our unsafe lift and inadequate space to get around the bus. That leaves me asking neighboring superintendents for help like the poor orphaned child no one wants who travels from relative to relative. I especially dislike this position because I was raised by a father who said things like, “don’t ask people for favors Kimberly because then you owe them.”

We’ll be paying a pretty price too, $250 per day to use the lift/bay 20 miles away. On July 20, we transport seven of our buses back and forth for the inspections. That will be a full day with my mechanics tied up, the cost of gas, and the cost to use their space. In addition, we’ve been servicing our vehicles at other garages when it’s anything we can’t do ourselves so there’s that expense.

So we continue to contemplate the problem, consider any and all alternatives, and plan for the future. And every time I think about it (daily) and we discuss it as a BOE/superintendent, we circle back to the same best solution. The project we put up in May that went down by one vote. A $1.4 million project that would replace the roof on the entire storage facility, build two mechanics bays with a new lift, handicapped bathroom (required by SED with the construction) and gain two more storage bays by repurposing the current mechanics bays. At no cost to the taxpayer with 83% building aid and the money the BOE already designated from our reserves.

The real kicker? Word is that SED is likely to stop providing state aid on storage facilities. Makes me wonder if we wait much longer if they’ll even aid the roof since it’s on a storage facility (the bus garage). Everything we have to do now actually costs our taxpayers more. How do I not put our best solution up for another vote? Especially when it’s at no cost to our taxpayers and we only lost it by one vote? And how long do we want to be in this position instead of taking care of our own problems? The Randolph community has always shown so much pride in this facility and who we are as a district—how did we end up looking to our neighbors for handouts?