Allen County Community College officials planning to upgrade their soccer complex in Iola have been thrown a curve ball.
College trustees were told Thursday that plans to build a large dugout on the edge of the soccer field have been scrubbed because it would have been placed over a natural gas line.
“And you cannot put a permanent structure over a gas line,” Athletic Director Randy Weber told the trustees.
The most likely option to be followed now, Weber said, is to keep the existing film tower in place — plans were to have it removed once the dugouts were built — and extend the fence to encompass the field entirely.
College President John Masterson said planners were looking at other options to protect the players from the elements, such as an elongated kiosk-type structure, similar to those found at metropolitan bus stops.
Weber chuckled at the notion of having an enclosed area with a tower in the middle — giving the impression of a prison yard.
Care will be given during the design and construction to avoid that impression, Weber said.
THE COLLEGE will spend more than $13,000 to dispose of old chemicals from the school laboratory.
The disposal was ordered after an inspector from the state fire marshal’s office noted the old chemicals while at the Iola campus to look over renovations to the lab.
“As soon as he saw the chemicals, we were written up,” said Steve Troxel, ACCC’s vice president for finance and operations.
The chemicals were classified as hazardous waste, which put in place a number of restrictions on how they were disposed of, Troxel explained. Clean Harbors, a Lenexa company, was hired to dispose of the chemicals at a price of $13,163.31. Clean Harbors had the lowest of three bids.
WORK CONTINUES on shaping the college’s 2011-12 budget, Troxel said.
Tuition and fees will remain unchanged for the upcoming school year — in part because ACCC has one more year of federal stimulus funds coming, and plans are to keep the school’s property tax levy at about 16.6 mills.
Troxel and the school’s department heads are looking at spending requests over the coming weeks.
If expected revenues do not match expenses, the college may look at using a portion of its cash reserves to balance the budget, Troxel said.
PLANS ARE officially on hold to build a sixplex west of the campus on White Boulevard.
Iola commissioners have approved a zoning variance that would permit construction of the facility — good for the next year — although a drop in enrollment for this year has lessened the college’s concerns about over-crowding in the ACCC dormitories.
“We’ll wait and see where we come in the fall,” Masterson said. “If it’s something we need to look at, we will. If we don’t, we won’t.”
BOB REAVIS, dean of the ACCC outreach campus in Burlingame, said the school has adjusted well to the closure of KanBuild, an Osage City-based builder of mobile homes. ACCC construction trades classes had worked over the past two years at KanBuild, but were forced to look elsewhere for work when the business announced in February it was suspending operations.
Since then, the school has reached out to Osage City and other government groups about various community projects, such as painting and refurbishing buildings, Reavis said.
“And it’s gone very, very well,” he said. Project-based work likely will be the program’s focus in the future, Reavis said.
JOHN MARSHALL, vice president for academic affairs, told trustees the college is in the early stage of planning a speakers series for the fall semester to discuss Kansas’ 150th year of statehood. The plan is to discuss books about events that have happened in Kansas.
TRUSTEES approved the purchase of three vehicles, a 15-passenger van from Twin Motors of Iola for $24,915, the lower of two received; a minivan from Shields Motors of Chanute for $16,808 with a trade-in, the lower of two bids; and a compact car from Twin Motors for $9,900 with trade-in, the lowest of four bids.
