School officials are trying to figure out why the electric heating bill at the high school/middle school is $90,000 over budget this year.
“We’re in the process of trying to figure out why that is,” schools Superintendent Stephen Tracy said.
This year’s bill was $490,000. Last year’s bill was $400,000.
The district is building a new middle school on the campus off Nutmeg Avenue, across from the high school. Officials first thought the activity at the construction site was the culprit.
“That turned out not to be the case,” Tracy said, as the under-construction middle school has its own electric meter.
Now it appears aging equipment at the school may be responsible.
“We believe the heating units in that building — which go back about 40 years — have been slowly degrading and becoming less and less efficient,” Tracy said. “You’re getting less heat, so you turn up the thermostat to get more heat and you end up burning more energy than you had thought.”
If the heating units have to be replaced, that could be a large capital expense — one that the school district may have to ask the city to borrow money to fund.
“It would be a major project. The high school is largely an electric-heated facility. That’s expensive,” Tracy said. “We have no idea what the cost of that project would be, but it would be a significant capital project that would have to be discussed and ultimately approved by the city.”
The potential bonding may be far down the road.
The new middle school, scheduled to open in January, will generate power with a gas turbine.
Tracy said some electricity will be able to be funneled to the high school.
In any event, “we have to get to the bottom of the technical problem so that we can solve it and try to get our expenses back in line,” Tracy said.
Mayor Anthony Staffieri, who worked as the city electrician in the 1970s, said city officials are well aware of the problems with the inefficient high school heating system.
“That school was built when electricity was cheap. They built an all-electric high school, which is why it is so expensive,” Staffieri said. “And the system they put it — it’s not the best-designed system, so it wastes electricity.”
The city hopes the new power generator will bring down costs at the high school. A long-term solution to the issue remains to be seen.
“Eventually something will have to get done there,” the mayor said.
Staffieri noted the heating system is one of several issues at the high school.
“It needs a roof. The building will need to be modified some time in the not too distant future,” Staffieri said.
