BROOKINGS — The Brookings School Board took action on a several facilities issues during Monday night’s meeting — including declaring the Fifth Street Gym surplus property. Keith Fodness, director of facilities for the district, said their facilities and construction committee recommended the school no longer hang on to the gym.

“Through the committee meeting last Friday, the decision was made to recommend declaring that building surplus — as it is no longer useful to the district — and to have an appraisal done on the property,” Fodness said. “The law allows you to use three real property owners in your district to do that appraisal, or you could hire an appraisal company. I think you’d probably get a better market value if you were to have an appraiser do it.”

The board voted to have the superintendent hire a professional for the gym appraisal.

“We do feel like it’s surplus because we have two new gyms — two new competitive gyms in the new schools — and so this facility doesn’t have as much need in our district,” Board President Teresa Binkley said. “If we weigh out the cost of maintaining it to what we can actually use it for, it doesn’t balance out.”

Per an Aug. 7 article in the Brookings Register, the city’s Park & Recreation Board has discussed acquiring the Fifth Street Gym. They estimated such a hypothetical acquisition would cost the city a minimum of $2.6 million in improvement costs alone — plus between $100,000 and $150,000 in yearly operating costs.

“The district really doesn’t have the resources to maintain it and continue to operate it,” board member Wes Tschetter said. “Also though, it’s in our interest that whoever assumes the building or ends up with the building has a financial responsibility to make sure that it’s in good repair and functional and not an eyesore to the community. That is an absolute must in our planning for what we do in the future.”

Declaring the building surplus property will not impact any ongoing activities at the gym.

“I just wanted to mention that no current use will be changed for anyone doing this,” board member Keli Books said. “All the city leagues and everything — volleyball, everything that’s planned in there — going to … surplus doesn’t mean that we still don’t maintain ownership and still don’t have all activities as planned.”

In other facilities matters, the board approved hiring MJ Dalsin of Sioux Falls to perform roof repairs on the high school, the Career and Technical Education building — formerly the East Central Multi District building — Camelot Intermediate, Dakota Prairie Elementary and the Mickelson Middle School.

“The repairs would be $51,800. I recommend that you do those, and (MJ Dalsin) has the manpower this fall to get those repairs completed before the snow flies. The CTE building is by far the worst building in your fleet — and there are a couple sections up there that could very well come loose if we had a big storm,” Fodness said. “They don’t give that roof a whole lot of life without repairs or potentially some re-roofing very soon.”

He said the roof repairs are capped at a maximum of $51,800 — but it’s possible they may come in under budget.

“This repairs the known issues on these roofs — the leaks that have been identified, the small tears in the fabric, the bridging. This puts them back in order, and it’s just preventative maintenance,” Fodness said.

He recommended the board adopt a long-term plan to deal with future roof maintenance and possible replacement.

“Down the road, I’d like to put in front of you a list that says you should take care of this roof within this many years and here’s how much we need to plan to spend,” Fodness said. “Put that in your five-year capital outlay budget moving forward, and you can plan for it and just get on a rotation. The roof is the most important part of the building.”

The board also voted to hire CO-OP Architecture of Sioux Falls to conduct renovations of the high school science rooms — a timely project that coincides with the roof repairs.

“With the science room addition or renovation — that’s in a section of the building that has a few problems with the roof. If you go in those science rooms, look up and you’ll see water stains. You can’t renovate a section of your building with a bad roof,” Fodness said.

The approved renovations are limited to just the high school science rooms.

“If we decide to do a comprehensive review of the high school — which will have to be done at some point — that would be a totally different conversation than this conversation right now,” Books said. “We know that is of some need down the road — just having a better grip on all of our facilities — but that is not what we’re utilizing CO-OP for.”

Email Jay Roe at jroe@brookingsregister.com.