School bond projects continue moving forward
The San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District Board of Trusted received a status update on the use of the 2023 voter approved bond funds. Prop B was $147,724,645 for “impactful updates” to all 12 campuses. Prop C was $984,563 for artificial turf replacement at San Marcos High School. Prop D was $17,478,750 for a natatorium, which is an indoor pool facility.
Bernie Sandoval, SMCISD chief of operations, said that ground hasn’t been broken on several of the major projects related to the 2023 bonds like site package one, which includes the parking lots at the majority of elementary campuses and Bonham Prekindergarten. Demolition has begun for one of the projects at DeZavala Elementary.
“If you’ve driven by there [DeZavala Elementary] recently, you’ve seen that the demo has been done on the softball field. We expect to start some work there in the next couple of weeks,” Sandoval said. “The elementary school project, which a majority of that is Hernandez [Elementary School], we’re going to have about 13 weeks over the summer to finish that project. Demo is going to be planned the day school lets out … We’re confident we can finish it.”
Sandoval said the new campus at Mendez Elementary should have bids from contractors in the next 30 to 45 days. He said for middle school improvements, the district is currently in the design development phase. He’s hoping to bring bids from contractors to the board in June.
SMCISD Board President Anne Halsey asked about the possibility of working with the city of San Marcos to convert some of the green space at Mendez Elementary School into soccer fields “to create a sort of second Five Mile Dam on that side of town” as had been discussed previously.
“I know we’ve had to make some changes because of the site and drainage issues,” Halsey said. “I hope that we haven’t completely lost sight of that, so the next time we look at the Mendez project I’d like to know specifically what [will be done there]. I know we talked about green space there that will be open to the community. But if we’re able to retain any of those playing fields and what that is going to look like and how it’s going to work — I would like an update on.”
Sandoval said the city of San Marcos has requested to create a detention pond on part of the greenspace, which would help with the flow of water when it rains.
“We had a zoom call with the city to talk about permitting and also talk about this detention pond,” Sandoval said. “They still want it. We still want to give it to them and be a good partner to the city, but it all depends on what we have available … I think what will happen is where the school sits today, once we demo that after the new school’s finished, that would be the perfect place to put these soccer fields.”
Sandoval said the district is “a bit further behind” on the San Marcos High School projects but hoping VLK Architects can give an update at the next meeting but the schematic design will likely not be ready at that point.
“This is a very complicated design. We’ve had programming meetings with the fine arts group. If you all remember, the majority of the work that we’re going to do out here is going to be the fine arts program,” Sandoval said. “We’ve got about 26,000 square feet of new edition to fine arts and another 19,000 [square feet] of renovations on the existing fine arts [building]. Of the $38 million, that’s going to represent about $20 million for the fine arts program.”
SMCISD Trustee At-Large Mari Salmi was curious if there was a timeline for completion of the projects at the highschool. Sandoval said the schematic design would likely be finished around June, and in July or August design development could be presented.
“VLK has done a lot of work. We’ve done a lot of work with them. We’ve got a meeting on the 26th with some of the highschool stakeholders,” Sandoval said. “The complicated thing for us, honestly, is the site circulation. It’s how do we get traffic in and out of here? … What do we do with this four way stop sign up here? That’s the big challenge.”
As far as the natatorium status, Sandoval said the initial bid has been received.
“We’re about five million over budget on the natatorium, but we’re tweaking that,” Sandoval said. “We’re looking at different options. We’re looking at the air conditioning of the space. We had talked about putting bleachers. What we’re talking about maybe is putting some decking and bringing in rollout bleachers. We’re talking about the number of restrooms that we have. And then we’re looking at possibly a prefabricated building instead of building something from the ground up.”
There will be coverage on bond project updates as it is brought to future SMCISD Board of Trustees meetings.
