Auditor recommends new SAU offices

Says records at risk

The school auditor says the SAU 9 offices located on Pine Street in North Conway should move or risk the safety of records and documents kept there.Steve Grzelak, of Grzelak & Company, auditors for the school district, shared his thoughts last week when he attended a Conway School Board meeting at which he praised the district for being one of the few in the state complying with the new GASBY 34 rules (GASB 34, pronounced Gatsby, is a new set of accounting rules, considered by accountants to be the most monumental change in government financial reporting in American history). He spoke highly of the staff; and voiced concerns about the safety of documents in the current SAU headquarters. "You should be proud of your people," Grzelak said of the SAU 9 staff. "As for your building, I can tell you have been at capacity for two to three years. We've seen the building is at capacity both in terms of people and the use of technology. This is one of the toughest facilities to work in and store things. Your facility is not laid out to manage a $25 million business. My job is to tell you that it doesn't lend itself to this current business market."Board chairman George Fredette wondered if Grzelak had ever put his findings into writing for the district. He said he had, but they were only concerns because the current system has not failed yet. "When we go through your current system there is nothing failing," he said. "... Right now, you're at risk for something that hasn't happened your system hasn't failed if you were a new public company the new standards would not allow you to operate like this."If the current accounting and filing system were to fail at the Pine Street Office, Grzelak said it would cost between $5,000 and $6,000 a week to fix it for a number of months. Grzelak praised Becky Jefferson, financial manger for the district for "being the glue" that holds the current system together. "What if Becky Jefferson doesn't come in; she's going to retire soon," he said. "You've got to start making plans how to get more resources in here. You have no margin of error right now... We make no adjusted entries up here, it's the darndest thing. I can't tell you enough how costly it can be if the system fails. One district spent $200,000 to get a year closed out. You either need to plan to pay when it breaks or designated some help."Superintendent Carl Nelson said funds are in he budget to add an upper level position to the SAU budget to assist Jefferson. "You've done real well and accomplished a lot but we do have come concerns," Grzelak said.Nelson said the ball in is rolling to try to remedy the current facility problems. The SAU 9 board appropriated $8,300 last month to conduct a feasibility study of relocating the school administrative offices to two proposed mothballed spaces at Kennett High School within the current vocational center and the 1938 portion of the existing high school.Members of the facility committee spent a month gathering information about their options, which include demolishing the existing building and starting anew; renovating the old 1938 portion of Kennett High School which faces Route 16; renovating the current vocational center at Kennett; renting private property; and renting public property. The SAU 9 Board agreed September 8 to appropriate $8,300 to hire Lee Kennedy (the school district's project managers for construction of a new high school and vocational center in Redstone) to do a study of what the costs would be as well as a schematic if the school offices were placed in the old part of the building or the vocational center.During the review of proposals, the committee looked at a plan to demolish and rebuild at the current Pine Street site, while Lee Kennedy offered proposals to renovate the middle school or the existing vocational center.The committee also reviewed rental proposals from Mountain High Marketplace, ReMax and Badger Realty. Nelson said the facilities committee will eventually complete a rating system of each of its options, ranking them from one to five, with five being the highest. After that the committee will consider its next steps. "We won't be able to do anything until we get the numbers for the old building and the vocational center," Nelson said. "Until then, a decision won't be made."In July, two bids to renovate the SAU 9 office on Pine Street in North Conway were rejected after they came in 43 percent higher than the estimated cost, prompting the facilities committee to scrap the idea of renovating and to look at other options. The two bids were from LA Drew, which bid $698,700, or $121.09 per square foot, and Glen Builders, which bid $716,801, or $122.66 per square foot. The board had estimated the 5,770-square-foot project would cost $486,593, or $84.33 per square foot.The SAU 9 board has budgeted $601,000 to renovate the existing property and add 3,780 square feet. About $75,000 had already been spent on minor renovations such as installing a sprinkler system. Currently the office is 3,334 square feet; the addition would put it at over 7,000 square feet.Nelson said there is roughly $460,000 available for the building construction, plus all costs.