T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM Marshalltown Community School District Board of Education members Leah Stanley and Maria Morales listen to tentative plans for Franklin Field during the regular Monday meeting. Morales voted in favor of them, and Stanley cast the lone opposing vote.

The higher than originally expected Franklin Field cost and specs were tentatively approved by the Marshalltown Community School District Board of Education at the regular Monday meeting. Board member Leah Stanley was the sole opposing vote.

The work on Franklin Field is part of the Reimagine Miller project, for which Marshalltown voters approved a $57 million bond referendum during the Nov. 5 general election, and will be paired with $49 million in Securing an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE) bonds for a $106 million renovation.

District Executive Director of Finance and Operations Randy Denham said the $8.7 million Franklin Field project estimate is a little higher than what was previously shared.

“There is other funding that will be available to offset those costs,” he said.

Denham said the action of the board was tentative approval since the cost or specs could change or board members could approve or deny bids, which will be due March 19.

“We’re hoping to have the formal work contract before the March 24 meeting as well, but depending on the turnaround time and looking at the bids when they come in, we might have to schedule a special meeting for that,” he told the board.

Superintendent Theron Schutte said they encountered some items that were not foreseen and thus impacted the increased cost.

“One is the fact that Franklin Field is in a flood plain, so there’s a significant amount of infill that’s going to have to be brought in to raise to meet the DNR [Iowa Department of Natural Resources] requirements there,” he said. “Another thing is shared expenses with the city on a major sewer line that runs through Franklin Field, as well.”

Schutte added in order to meet city parking code requirements, there are plans to include some onsite and additional parking as an extension of the Franklin Elementary staff parking lot.

“Many of those things will probably be bid as alternates,” he said. “So we can choose to accept them or not. Probably one of the bigger things, too, was the decision once we found out by code we had to have so many public restrooms for males and females.”

The originally planned bleachers turned into a grandstand with storage, concessions and public restrooms which significantly increased the cost.

“We’re confident with different funding sources that we have that can go toward this,” Schutte said. “The increased cost of this project will not have a negative impact on the overall Miller project we will be embarking on in a year or later.”

Stanley asked if there were any thoughts to delay the Franklin Field project until after Miller Middle School was complete due to the budget increasing by at least 40 percent compared to when the district did the bond.

“Just because that is our primary focus for the bond,” she said.

Schutte said there was not.

“We’re planning to move forward with taking it out to bid,” he said. “We can always put the brakes on it if those bids don’t come in favorably. . . . If we wait on it, it’s not going to be any cheaper in three, four years from now. There’s really not a lot of latitude within the project itself. There’s not a lot of bells and whistles in the project. In fact, it’s kind of a watered-down version of what we did at the high school.”

Schutte added that if the board is uncomfortable when the bids come in, they can step back.

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Contact Lana Bradstream

at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.