Schools Bemoan 40-Week State Backlog
A backlog in the New York State review process for school district capital projects has already caused delays in Sag Harbor and now threatens the ability of East Hampton and Springs to get new projects off the ground in a timely manner.
The New York State Education Department recently announced that the process is up to 40 to 42 weeks for engineering reviews. The state needs to sign off on projects before schools can break ground.
According to Jeanne Beattie, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, the state reviews approximately 2,000 school projects per year, all of which are completed by three engineers. Those engineers tackle issues such as fire code compliance, electrical safety, emergency lighting, public address, heating and ventilation, and plumbing.
“The engineering review is currently causing the backlog,” Ms. Beattie said in an email. “We are taking internal steps to address this, and we are also looking to increase engineering staff from the current three employees to a total of eight for long-term reduction of the backlog. We did receive additional funding in the last budget for this purpose and currently have approval to fill two engineering positions, with more expected to follow.”
In Sag Harbor, Jennifer Buscemi, the business administrator, said projects originally slated to begin this past summer have been pushed down the road until such time that the state is able to complete its review. As of Sept. 8, the last time she checked the status of Sag Harbor’s project application, there were still 90 applications ahead of it.
The capital project, which is to include, among other things, a turf field, an updated auditorium, a bus parking lot, and reconfiguration of the shop and kitchen at Pierson Middle and High School, was approved by voters by referendum in November 2013.
“When the vote passed, the review time was about 20 weeks. I believe by the time we submitted, it had climbed to 26 to 28 weeks,” Ms. Buscemi said in an email. She added her reaction: “Very frustrating!”
The Springs School District is facing the possibility that it could soon submit a project to the New York State Education Department for an architectural and engineering review. The district is coping with a shortage of space for students. Its facilities committee on Monday recommended adding modular or portable classrooms by the start of the next school year, reported elsewhere in The Star this week. That kind of work still requires approval from the state.
“For us right now, we still have a little bit of a way to go, so it’s kind of hard to predict that far into the future because that backlog could be a temporary backlog,” Liz Mendelman, the Springs School Board president, said recently. “Hopefully, by the time we do our project, the state will be adequately staffed and resourced.”
The East Hampton School District is mulling an energy performance project that would add solar panels to all three of its buildings, a natural gas co-generator system at the high school, and 12 other energy-related improvements. These, too, would require state approval.
“That’s the cold reality. It’s somewhere around a year that they’ll pick it up and review it. . . . This could be a two-and-a-half-year process,” said Danny Haffel, the executive director of energy solutions for the Long Island operation of Johnson Controls Inc., who presented the energy proposal to the East Hampton School Board on Tuesday.
Rich Burns, East Hampton’s superintendent, said it’s a lengthy process. The district only recently received approval for a security-related project — the details of which were not released due to its sensitive nature — that caused it to have to delay the project a whole year, from the summer of 2015 to the summer of 2016, because the work cannot be completed while students are in school.
“Would we want it to be a more timely process? Sure,” Mr. Burns said. “As superintendents, we all complain to the state. . . . We take care of what we can take care of. These are things that are really out of our control.”