NEVC finally getting a makeover

Retro-Tech Systems crewmen Brian Conklin, in the bucket, and Brandon Luther of Kansas City work Friday to replace the outside lighting at NEVC's industrial arts building. They represent one of several contractors that are renovating schools in Walker and Schell City.

WALKER -- A bevy of Kansas City contractors descended on Northeast Vernon County Schools here and at Schell City last Monday to renovate 83-year-old lighting, wiring, insulation and heating and cooling systems.

Financed with a $171,580 loan from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, the project was necessitated in August 2010 when voters rejected the R-1 District's $3.5 million plan to move the Walker junior-senior high school and Schell City elementary school into a newly constructed kindergarten through 12th grade complex between the two cities at Harwood.

NEVC Superintendent Charles Naas said Friday that Retro-Tech Systems, Building Envelope Solutions, CM Contracting and other companies expected to finish this weekend. "They have done a lot in just a few days," Naas said.

"The school board members have been champing at the bit to get rolling and they are very excited to have all this under way."

Old lighting fixtures have been replaced with new fixtures, electronic ballasts and more efficient bulbs, insulation has been put around doors and windows while cracked mortar was repaired and new heating and cooling systems and thermostats have been installed.

School board members had said the district had to have new heating and cooling because its 1929-vintage three-story buildings were too cold on the ground floors and too hot on the upper ones. "We're hoping the cost will come in a little under the loan amount because some of the materials were cheaper than we expected," Naas said.

He reported Walker contractors Brandon Garwood and Tim Koehn this spring had already made spot repairs to the Walker school's 6,873-square-foot roof and put new lighting in Walker's gymnasium, although a complete $80,000 roof installation may be undertaken if enough money is available.

Naas said David Souza and Larry Applegate had provided labor at no cost to replace 10 windows.

In a somewhat unusual arrangement, the district has contracted with the Energy Solutions Professionals Co. of Overland Park, Kan., to make two loan payments each year to ESP with its savings between what it usually pays for energy and the new amount. If the lesser amounts are not enough to retire the 10-year loan, ESP will assume the difference. The district is paying 2 percent interest.

NEVC's utility providers are Kansas City Power & Light, MFA Oil & Propane of Nevada and the Walker and Schell City water departments. "ESP guarantees we will save that much money and they will pay the government," said Naas, noting that MDNR was financed by the U.S. Department of Energy.

ESP President Jeff Flathman said Friday from Overland Park that Project Engineer Bob Miller and Marketing Director Tim O'Kane, who attended a number of nighttime board meetings here, were gratified to see the plan nearing fruition.

"We had said it might take up to two weeks, but we're shooting to have most of it done this week," Flathman said.

In what Naas described as "a setback," R-1 board members were chagrined last October to hear the stagnant state and national economies had dissuaded Kansas City area financial institutions from getting involved.

Naas said Greyhawk Commercial Finance had nixed a proposal by NEVC and ESP to fund $200,000 in improvements.

But the logjam broke in January with Naas' announcement that a 20-page loan application O'Kane and he wrote had been approved by the MDNR's Energize Missouri Schools and Local Governments Program.