ASHEBORO – Randolph County has moved one step closer toward the construction of a new high school.
At this week’s meeting, the Randolph County Board of Commissioners approved a budget amendment to allocate $6 million for the purchase of approximately 90 acres of property located on Walker Mill Road intended to be utilized for the site of a new Randleman High School.
“Approximately one year ago, this board authorized the Randolph County School System to begin looking for land for future locations for Liberty Elementary School and Randleman High School,” county manager Zeb Holden said. “It took some time, but some land was found to serve the Randleman High School site.”
Following the purchase, Randolph County Schools will have 180 days – with an extra 90 days that can be added on – to determine feasibility and make sure the site is indeed usable.
“This was not an easy task to site,” board chairman Darrell Frye said. “There’s not much property in the Randleman area that is not in the water critical area of Randleman Lake and that greatly affects any development that takes place in that area … So of this roughly 90 acres, only 24% of it can be built on.”
Of the $6 million, $5 million is for the property acquisition and $1 million will be for professional services.
“This will just kind of get it started, but the actual construction costs and the rest of whatever costs will come later,” assistant county manager / finance officer Will Massie said. “When it’s designed, we’ll have a better feel for what the costs will be.”
“What we’ve done so far is identify property that will work, we’re looking at building a school capacity up to 1,200 students,” said Dale Brinkley, executive director of operations for the Randolph County School System. “The architects have done a test fit on the proposed property to make sure that it would work and fit within the ordinances of that property.”
Randleman High School’s capacity is around 900, but there are 21 mobile units, 17 of which are in use. However, according to Brinkley, those aren’t included in the total capacity count for the school.
Other funding
The board also approved the allocation of just under $1 million in strategic planning funds to a variety of organizations.
“The county has annually received strategic planning fund dollars from Waste Management for host fees of the landfill,” Holden said. “The board has generously considered offering the opportunity for local nonprofits to seek funding for projects or items that they might not otherwise have been able to do without this strategic plan funding.”
Those receiving funds included the City of Asheboro, the City of Randleman, Emergency Services, Friends of Patterson College, Keaton’s Place, Lydia’s Place, OE Enterprises, Our Daily Bread, Randolph County Family Crisis Center, Randolph Partnership for Children, RhinoLeap, Sleep in Heavenly Peace and Victory Junction.
“I won’t be voting for any of these to pass,” said commissioner Lester Rivenbark, who voted against the allocations. “Not because I don’t think there are some good organizations in here – I think there’s some great organizations and some that do a lot of good things for our county – but I just feel that with the budget going to be as tight as it’s going to be and with some of the requests we’ve gotten for things that we are required to fund, that this money would be better spent going back into the budget.”
Contracts approved
The board also approved various contracts, including an approximately $1.2 million construction contract with Laughlin-Sutton Construction Company for improvements to the Ramseur Water Treatment Facility.
“This project will transform the way Ramseur treats its water from free chlorine to chloramines which would allow it to integrate with water from the City of Asheboro and the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority,” said assistant county manager William Johnson.
The board also approved a $186,000 contract with Built Consulting for structural modifications of the Mt. Shepherd VIPER tower in order to provide connectivity to the new Randleman VIPER tower as well as a $130,000 contract with Engineered Tower Solutions for the purchase and installation of coax lines and antennas at the Randleman tower.
Finally, the board approved a $250,000 contract with Carolina Recording Systems for updates to the county’s 911 audio and video recording systems.
“It’s time to update our 911 audio and video recording system,” said Jared Byrd, deputy chief of emergency services. “We are required by state law to record all 911 calls that come into our 911 center and this is for the equipment that does that.”
Byrd said the county records all of its 911 calls, admin lines, VIPER radio channels, paging services as well as screen recording all telecommunicators’ screens.
Nearly $240,000 of the contract cost will be covered by the Emergency Systems Telephone Fund.
The Randolph County Board of Commissioners will next meet May 5.
