Proposition #1 Student Parking Questions

Where will our RCS students park in our proposition #1, which includes a parking lot plan?

With our capital project vote two days away, I realize our students are concerned about this question. The simple answer is that our ‘Juniors’ lot remains exactly the same and there will still be parking where the ‘Seniors’ lot is now but it will likely be the ‘Employee’ lot. There will be significant additional parking at the tennis court lot,  visitor parking at the bus garage where we currently park extra vehicles and overall we are gaining 44 spots.

The drawings we have included in the materials we’ve published are not detailed to the level we will use when we go to bid. The architects call these ‘conceptual drawings’ and I’m glad because I’ve learned some things that I will follow through on with them after the project vote this Tuesday.

What have I learned from listening to our employees, students and participants at the public hearing that we can now work to include in the detail?

Assigning a specific parking spot to every employee and student with permission to park is high on my list of great ideas. Working with the architect to really look at the entire traffic flow plan again–including where two way traffic is planned,  finding a way to afford to include the exit drive parking lot and walkway directly from the top parking lot to the field, and how to add even more parking where possible are also on the list.

Now you may be asking ‘isn’t this a final design’? Of course not! When residents vote on Tuesday, they are approving a conceptual design and a total proposition dollar amount. We are permitted to spend less than the voter approved total, but not a dime more.

Our BOE members and I have already met with our construction manager to talk about the VALUE of the project. We want the District’s monies worth out of this project! After Tuesday’s vote we then are prepared to pay the costs of a detailed design by CannonDesign, our architectural firm. We will fight to make the most of every dollar.

And please don’t worry about snow removal. This is a question that’s come up that I don’t quite understand. We will handle the snow just as we always have–we haven’t always put it in the same place that we do now. Remember when we piled it directly in front of the elementary school? We can figure this out.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback and conversation! This is how we end up with the best possible result. After Tuesday, please continue to express your ideas and questions and I will include them in our work with our construction management company, Campus, and our architect, CannonDesign.  We also have a good team working on this with the varied expertise of our BOE members and our employees at RCS.

 

 

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *