Seven months after voters in the Greenburgh (N.Y.) Central School District rejected a $115 milion bond proposal, its facility problems are mounting.
Lohud.com reports that employees have been forced to move out of the Warburg mansion, which serves as the district's administration building. An architect’s report in August concluded that parts of the building were unsafe.
Part of the district’s early childhood program also had been housed in the mansion, but students were recently removed.
Michael Falcone, the district's director of facilities and operations, says the mansion needs a new roof, new siding and exterior work.
“If you open up the walls, there will be more problems," he says.
Students in the early childhood program have been relocated to the Lee F. Jackson School, and the administration is working out of the high school.
The Warburg building has been in disrepair for years, Falcone says. It has widespread water damage, bowing walls, sloping floors, falling plaster and cracks in the exterior.
Repairs to the mansion weren’t even included in a $115 million bond proposal that voters rejected in March by almost 2 to 1. Those repairs had been removed from the bond proposal when officials reduced the size of the proposal by $51 million from its original $166 million pricetag.
The heart of the plan was to sell two elementary schools in need of extensive repairs and build a new school for grades 3-8.
Administrators said they did not yet know how much repairs to the mansion will cost.
Superintendent Tahira DuPree Chase says that before the district develops a new bond plan, it will try to determine what the community wants. The district has hired a firm to conduct a community survey.
From Falcone’s perspective, many repairs must be addressed, regardless of where the money comes from.
“The high school’s in really bad condition,” Falcone says. “They have to get a bond.”
As for the mansion, Falcone says it has needed a new roof for a long time.
“You don’t get this kind of plaster damage overnight,” he says.
