Meagher, on the other hand, may not be as viable on the open market. The district rejected an offer of $220,000 for the property from the Apollon Group LLC last year after deciding to explore the costs of turning it into a multi-use district headquarters. The district pays nearly that much each year to rent storage and maintenance space on Ulster Avenue, part of the reason why Padalino said it’s worth considering the Meagher plan. Selling Cioni would put the property back on the tax rolls, Padalino added, and if the district stayed there it would have to eventually address some of the building’s potentially costly issues.
“We’re going to need a new roof, we’re going to need a new heating system,” Padalino said. “Generally, this is the last building that we look at when we’re making repairs: There are no kids here. This building has been the victim of deferred maintenance for many years.”
The district has one more vacant building, one which Padalino acknowledged was in great shape. But the former Anna Devine Elementary School in Rifton isn’t centrally located.
“We have to have a central office rather than a satellite office,” said school board Trustee James Shaughnessy last week.
Padalino acknowledged that the plan wouldn’t be cheap, and Kingston wouldn’t get a lot of help from Albany with it.
“We only receive aid from the State Education Department on buildings that are used as schools,” Padalino said, meaning that the roughly 60 percent of the expenses in a project like the $137.5 million Kingston High School Second Century renovation plan will receive in aid from the state would not be similarly applicable here. The district, Padalino mused, could use Smart School money, a $2 billion bond act enacted by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year.
There is also the potential for partners to join in on the universal pre-K plan, but Padalino said that it was too soon to know whether that might materialize.
“I have no one in mind at this time,” Padalino said this week. “My phone hasn’t been ringing off the hook from our UPK partners since this presentation came out. I think if it was a reality, they may see this as an opportunity to come in and expand their business and serve more students.”
Padalino stressed that the plan is far from a done deal, and there’s still plenty of time before any potential proposal would go before the public for a vote.
“The board just received this, and I think they’re still kind of taking it all in,” Padalino said. “When I talked to them a bit more informally a year ago, we were talking about putting $3 million in there. That was our eyeball estimate, before we got the engineers and architects into the building, and looking at the heating systems and the wiring and moving walls and updating things that needed to be updated. Now if we want to do all of those things that we want to do in that building, the price tag is going to be a little higher, but there’s still the opportunity for some value engineering there.”
Padalino said that if the board wanted to move forward on the plan, there’s still time to get it to voters by next spring.
“Right now our foot is off the gas pedal,” Padalino said. “We had it on the gas pedal, but now we’re coasting a little bit to let them think about it. If they say they want to go, to me this would be the kind of thing I would like to see put up as a proposition in May [of 2016]. If the board told me in the next month or two they wanted to move forward, we could get it done.”
So, paving the field behind the residential homes on Shufeldt St., Stanley St., and Linwood Pl. would be for employee parking. There is some drainage there but, would need extensive drainage as not to flood adjoining properties with storm runoff. Also, this MUST be determined to subjugate/eliminate ANY parking on Wynkoop Pl. AND Stanley St. as these are narrow, residential streets.