The Vance County Board of Education took a couple of building matters into closed session for discussion Monday night, and both could be relevant to Henderson residents who have nothing to do with the schools.
The first was an item scheduled for action that was postponed: a plan to institute a traffic pattern design from the city of Henderson to make dropoffs and pickups at E.M. Rollins Elementary School safer.
At a City Council meeting in May, Claiborne Woods, the maintenance director for Vance County Schools, brought a proposal to erect Jersey barriers in the center of South Garnett Street Extension in front of Rollins to solve a dangerous traffic mess each school morning.
While one line of southbound traffic is in the carpool lane to drop off children, through traffic continues in another southbound lane. Meanwhile, people illegally park in the center of the road to let out children or to walk them into the school, and northbound drivers drop off children who must cross all of the southbound traffic to reach the school.
The main goal of the Jersey barriers, as Woods explained the plan, was to prevent children from crossing all of the traffic from the northbound side.
City Council members and Mayor Clem Seifert had no problem with the goal but questioned the effectiveness and attractiveness of Jersey barriers.
The city and schools kept working on the problem and produced a plan that Woods brought before the Building and Grounds Committee on Friday.
The new plan calls for a traffic island down the center of the street, angle parking on both sides of the island and one line of traffic on either side of the road. A 6-foot-tall chain-link fence would be placed in the center of the traffic island to control pedestrians.
The project would involve funding “from various sources,” according to the minutes of the June 10 meeting.
Board Chairman Tommy Riddle was supposed to bring the plan before the full board for approval Monday night, but Riddle said legal issues forced the discussion behind closed doors and no action.
That provided an opening for board member Robert Duke to raise another issue under Woods’ purview: the success or failure of the school system’s 2003 energy conservation contract with Progress Energy Solutions, now Energy Systems Group.
Duke, who was always leery about holding the contractor to its pledge to save the school system enough on its energy bills to pay for the energy-saving renovations, said he asked for a report last year on the results of the project and has not seen such a report.
The school system’s 12-year contract calls for spending $3.1 million and saving $4.6 million, and Duke said he had heard that one or two schools did not live up to projections.
Woods refused to comment on what Duke had heard. He said he has a meeting with the contractor June 27 to discuss some issues and will report back to the board after that. No school board meeting is scheduled for July, although a called meeting is likely late in the month to approve personnel moves before the start of the school year.
Riddle asked Duke whether a report in late July would satisfy him.
“I guess it will have to,” Duke said. He complained that the project appeared to be in the control of a few people instead of the entire school board, which had to approve the initial contract.
“As big as that project was, I think we’re being kept in the dark,” Duke said.
If there’s a secret about the energy conservation contract, Roy Williams of Energy Systems let at least some of it out May 23 before the City Council. In trying to sell the city on the idea of contracting with Energy Systems to conduct conservation renovations throughout city buildings, Williams acknowledged that the schools didn’t get the expected savings in the first year.
He said the contractor paid the difference and made construction corrections to avoid further shortfalls, as the contract called for.