Council to Discuss Lewisville H.S. Fire Sprinklers

The Lewisville City Council meets Monday night at 7:00 PM, and will discuss among other things, variances being requested for the construction of a new athletic field house at Lewisville High School.

The $4 million field house was approved by voters in the 2008 bond election held by the district, and will allow Lewisville High School to shuffle around various boys and girls athletic programs and accommodate them in updated, new, and refurbished facilities.

The City of Lewisville's General Development Ordinance requires the approval of a new site plan for major construction like this, and property owners are required to meet certain standards or request variances.

The LHS property doesn't currently comply due to placement of driveways, number of parking spaces, placement of fire lanes, number of hydrants, and so forth. Mayor Dean Ueckert and City staff, including Fire Marshal Tim Ippolito have been working with the district to get LISD to install automatic fire sprinklers in the Lewisville High School main building.

At this point, the LISD school board has approved $4.8 million for the cost of the field house and other improvements. District staff have been working with the architect and consultants to get a plan for the project, and have indicated a desire to do the improvements now rather then in 9 years when the HVAC equipment was scheduled to be replaced.

The sticking point right now is the timeline. The Mayor and City staff would like the retrofit to begin this summer, and be completed as soon as possible for the protection of students in Lewisville High School. The District says that because of uncertainties related to having to remove asbestos materials from the ceilings at the same time, they can only commit to a timeline of 3 summers (2 years, 2 months), doing the project in 3 phases, each phase completing installation of sprinklers in 1/3rd of the high school.

District officials seem certain that asbestos is in use throughout the school, which was built before the usage of asbestos was banned. Typically asbestos is safe as long as it is not disturbed. But since the sprinkler installation requires taking out the ceilings, the district plans to replace the HVAC system as well, and asbestos removal is required.

Removing asbestos requires specially trained personnel to completely close off the area, enter wearing full protective gear and respirators, and remove contaminated materials. During this process, the architect, and the HVAC and sprinkler design and installation people cannot get in to even see what they need to do.

The school year ends on June 10th. All furniture would have to be removed from each classroom, then asbestos removal would have to begin immediately, lasting for a couple of weeks, then construction of new HVAC and sprinker systems could begin. Any electric cabling, or network wiring disturbed during the process would have to be replaced. All safety equipment like fire alarm wiring would have to be back in place and fully tested before students could return in late August.

Community Activist Tamela Bowie told Asst. Superintendent Alan King in a meeting last week that if the current company under contract can't get the work done within one summer, then perhaps he should look for another company. The architect said that it would be physically impossible to get that much work done during one summer. As a rule of thumb, he stated that he could get one elementary school done during a summer, a middle school done during 2 summers, and a high school would take 3 summers.

Of course the question that follows is whether the work could be divided up among multiple contractors in order to get the work done more quickly, or if it would be akin to asking 9 women to make a baby in one month.

Mayor Ueckert continues to negotiate with the district on the improvements, and said he will be meeting with them on Monday once again.

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Cities in Texas have wide latitude to pass development ordinances and require even other governmental bodies like school districts to follow them.

Lewisville has bent over backwards in years past to accommodate the district by granting variances to ordinances that are largely cosmetic or for traffic control. But there is a sense by many Lewisville citizens, including myself, that the district has taken Lewisville's accommodations for granted.

In LISD's last board meeting, the trustees voted to approve a $500,000 project required by the Town of Flower Mound to bury power lines crossing its property purely for cosmetic purposes.

In the City of Lewisville's case, we're looking at improvements required for the life safety of the students and our firefighters who might someday have to respond to a fire in the building.

The citizens of Lewisville may or may not care about whether the high school gets its athletic field house, but they should care about whether the high school their kids attend is safe or not.

Alan King has indicated that if the City denies the variances, that his approval to go forward with the field house project and the sprinklers will end. The project would have to go back to the drawing board.

At this point, the results are not yet back from the asbestos testing firm, and may take a couple more weeks. The construction bid for the project may expire in the next month, but given the state of the economy, I would find it hard to imagine that it couldn't be extended if needed.

Depending on what happens in the negotiations on Monday, we may see the Council table the request until the second meeting in the month. What I hope we can avoid is a situation where we get neither the field house nor the sprinklers and asbestos abatement. I'm glad to have Mayor Ueckert working on this. Hopefully concerned citizens will show up and support the Mayor in sticking up for Lewisville's kids.