Quick Welcome And What’s Changing

SPEAKER_00 0:04

I'm David Halleck, Superintendent of Jefferson R. Seventh School District, and thank you for joining me for this update. It's been a really busy summer. We appreciate the support last spring to pass Proposition S. Just want to give you an update. Um, the summer's been real busy and a lot of changes daily. So depending on when you watch this, things will be changing quicker right in front of our eyes as

New Scoreboards And Sponsor Spots

SPEAKER_00 0:25

well. So, first of all, actually the first project I want to talk about is non-proposition S related. Uh, some of you may have been aware, but our one of our scoreboards had some serious malfunctions at the end of the basketball season at the high school, um, and we needed to replace them. Uh, we had a group led by Mr. Don Bollinger come in and donate the scoreboards for the school district. Um, and then the school district in turn purchased a sound system uh to go in the gym. So that's been upgraded. Still a few trimmings to go along, a little bit of paint there, but the scoreboards are up and running, and we're kind of exploring their abilities or the capabilities as well. Um, they do have a couple of spots open for sponsors. I believe there's two left. If you have any any interest in having your advertising up there for these scoreboards over a couple year period to pay them off, um please see uh Mr. Bollinger, or you can always contact myself, Mrs. Fish, or Mr. Rugley at the high school. All right,

Prop S Security Cameras And Locks

SPEAKER_00 1:19

and moving into the proposition S part of this, we do have a prop S webpage for updates. We'll share along with this podcast, and we've got some videos in there. We've kind of tried to update it. But again, in the last couple of weeks, I've really taken off with some of the activity. It's hard to keep up with everything daily, but uh you can get a great look, and a lot of great work has gone into this. Um, the first thing is uh was the technology and security portion of prop proposition S. Um, we sent a submitted an RFP this summer for a group to come in and update our cameras and work on our door locks, as we talked about last year during proposition S. Um, that was approved in August, and we have uh Freedom Security uh as a partner in this. Uh we've as soon as they were approved, Mr. Schaefer has done a wonderful job of um uh really um organizing this and supporting this project for the for the best interest of our kids. Um the cameras have been ordered. Uh we intend that those will go in hopefully by November 1st. And in the next round, we'll be getting the doors, the new locks there. There's some other trimmings as well, like the the entry will look a little different with our new system. Uh Raptor will go away. It's there currently to the end to December, but we'll have a new system in place at minimum by January when the kids come back for spring break or uh for second semester, um, if not earlier. Um so that's in motion right now, and they've been uh Freedom Security has been a great partner through this, um, and we look forward to what getting all this done.

Softball And Baseball Field Progress

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Uh the second thing is the softball baseball facility. Um, I think the word there this summer has been rain. Uh, rain has hurt us in trying to get that project done. It has to do with the slope of the hill, then the facility, and then the slope on the other side. As it rained a lot, we lost 15 days in July alone due to the weather. Uh, they could not work around the outside of the stadium because of the hillsides. It had to come across the middle. So that held us up a little bit there, but it's sure moving now. So if you get a chance to go up there and again, I ask you to maybe look at the website as we've got some uh drone footage and some other pictures, and then ultimately we will put a package together kind of showing the progress all summer long. But a lot of exciting things there. Um, concession stand at the softball baseball field uh will not be complete by this fall. It'll be done probably a little bit later as we get closer to December. Um, however, we are still hoping to have a couple softball games this fall. Like I said, the weather was tough, uh, but we're really close, and I should have an update here in about a week or so. And then we want to do a big kind of community opening night for it as well. And kind of what we're tentatively thinking is maybe getting some pitching machines out there and allowing the little league guys to come up and take some cuts on the new field, but we'll get that information out once the field's up and running and we can move forward with that. Um,

Football Stadium Timeline And Permits

SPEAKER_00 4:10

the next number three is the football field and track stadium. Um, quite honestly, it's been delayed by a lot of permitting um delays, and we're to a point now that the concession stand has been approved. Uh that was approved last week. So you're gonna see movement on that right now. Uh it's been sent really simply to permitting out there. We did have a few delays early, um, not really related to the permitting, but we did hit a water line and a couple other buried lines. I remember Larry Blaja telling me years ago that when you get in that hillside, you're gonna probably hit some stuff, and we did. Um, and we sure miss him as part of our community, but I remember that distinctly. Um, the press box construction will wait to after the year, after the football season, and be done this winter. Um we had a contingency plan for everything else except the press box. So we just kept the old press box up and running for this season, then that will all be complete hopefully by the spring track season and for sure next football as well. So baseball, so uh softball, baseball, and then the football stadium improvements are moving along. Uh it's good to see again with the technology.

Danby Playground And Parking Redesign

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Uh now the other two was a Damby playground and parking. Uh, if you want to go back to the June board meeting, we gave a pretty extensive presentation of where we were with that uh for further reference. And then also uh at the end we'll have our C SIP committee, our C SIP annual C SIP meeting here in October. You can come for the more specific update on that. But to keep it concise, we submitted plans in June to our engineer and our engineering teams work pretty quickly on identifying what we needed to do at Danby. We've had submitted the first round, they're being looked at by the county right now. Really, the goal here is that we will really maximize our park ability to park around the building with some additional parking spaces and lots. Uh we've got some traffic control mitigation. We're going to move away from the roundabout concept. We've got a better solution that's going to be much more efficient from a financial uh side and also really increase the parking. But I think uh long term as well, really have a really neat community feel to the playground that would be going into the back behind Danby. The ultimate goal here is to send this out to bid, uh, hopefully in January, as late as maybe February, early February, have a decision made in March. And then uh hopefully next summer that you know the outside of Danby is going to go undergo a tremendous facelift and really have some neat things put in place. And we just got to keep working with the county to make sure we get the permissions to tie into Dooling Hollow taken care of. We're we're working on that right now. But uh it's been a fun process, a lot of work, uh, a lot of learning as well on my end. But uh we've had some great partners in this all the way through, and that kind of summarizes the Damby playground and parking.

Blue Jay Way Extension And MoDOT

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Of course, the big ticket item that we know that affects us daily, which is the primary focus of Proposition S, um, was the Blue J Way extension. Um I would just say, you know, we were very upfront about the what we called like our multi-jurisdictional uh process here with MODOT, and everybody needs to be involved in that. And that is very much the case. Um, we've been working really hard on that. We've submitted initial plans. So kind of where we're at right now is we're to the position uh by October that we'll have submitted for the 50-50 cost share through Modot. Really appreciate the communication from MODOT, specifically Jordan Dalaveras and his team. He's answered every phone call or email that I've sent him uh with any questions. And there's been times he reached out to me to make sure that we're moving in the right direction to make application for that. So hopefully in the next week we'll have that completed and sent in. I've completed the five-hour uh MODOC course to be able to help oversee that. Uh, we have a great partner in Cochrane on this project that's really opened up our eyes to a lot of things we we need to be doing out there. So, in short, uh, with the application here in October, that award is announced in December. And at that point, hopefully we'll be able to put together a timeline, a specific timeline. But between the courses and meeting with Cochrane and meeting with the MODOC crews and various meetings all summer, I've got a pretty long, extensive checklist, and it has to be very thorough. We do have that checklist, but we just need to make sure and see where we're at with the funding and where we're at and what we can or can't do there before we get to a specific date. We've got a lot of the plans that we need to do in action, and some of those are moving forward right now. So again, appreciate all your support last spring uh for this project. Um, you know, we had you can see a lot of traffic in the morning out there. Um again, had kind of an issue Friday morning, um, that we all know how how difficult that is. And that's the one thing I've noticed as we start working deeper with groups that are maybe not directly associated with our community on this project, they really start looking at that intersection. They they they recognize how how what what a not great situation that is uh for anybody out there, and that uh this this this commitment to our kids' safety through the roundabout and the extension into our road, our um campus is a big deal for us. So thank you.

CCIP Meeting Invite And Closing

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Last thing is is we have our you'll be seeing uh some advertising going out for our annual CCIP meeting. That'll be Thursday, October 8th, 6:30 p.m. in the PAC. Um we will cover the Prop S updates a little more detail, review the checklist that we had going for years, kind of where we're at, and kind of how we want to move forward to make sure that the district is always planning and and trying to have the best facilities for our kids. And then also kind of the local finances surrounding you know school districts across Missouri and specifically ours as well. Love to see you there. Thank you for listening, and uh, we'll keep providing updates as we have the opportunity.