GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The Green Bay Area Public School District (GBAPS) provided FOX 11 a tour of its three-story district office building on Broadway on Thursday, as the school board is expected to vote later this month on whether to relocate the building’s operations elsewhere.
District officials wanted to show the public what goes on inside the building and why they say it might be costly to replicate elsewhere.
The building’s future has been debated as the district deals with a budget deficit and a projected enrollment decline of about 12% over the next decade.
237 full-time equivalent employees work out of the district office building, referred to as DOB. About 150 employees require an office or cubicle, according to chief operating officer Josh Patchak, who showed FOX 11 around the 95-year-old building.
“We have technology deployment,” said Patchak while listing operations in the building that he believes could be difficult to replicate in another building. “We’ve got an auto garage and shop to do vehicle maintenance and repair. We have a carpentry shop, paint shop. We have vehicle storage as well.”
Moving DOB’s operations into West High School, which is operating 500 students below capacity, would cost between $20 million and $26 million, according to the district.
“The big cost for the move is renovation,” said Patchak. “I think the total project cost just for the renovations are around $17 million. We have to repurpose space that is designed to be classrooms into space that is designed to be offices.”
Patchak says that $17 million estimate would likely be similar if another one of the district’s buildings was looked at for office renovations.
He also noted the cost of building a new entrance at West for district offices would be about $2 million.
The cost of moving the equipment and property from DOB would be about $250,000, according to Patchak.
FOX 11 asked Patchak, “There is a perception from some of the public out there that this number ($20 million to $26 million) was inflated just because people don’t want to move out of this building. How would you convince those people that is not the case?”
“Dr. Tiller said it well I think at the meeting, those of us who work here, we don’t care where we work,” said Patchak.
School board members were given a tour, similar to FOX 11, before their meeting this past Monday where district officials revealed the $20 million to $26 million estimate.
At the meeting, school board members were also told the annual utility savings would only be about $147,000 and the 3-acre property would fetch about $2.9 million dollars in a sale.
The board members seemed to agree the move wasn’t a good idea for the price.
“I can’t find a square inch of space in this building that is not being used,” said Lynn Gerlach, a school board member.
Board member Andrew Becker said the issue should still be looked more closely.
“There’s just so many things that haven’t been explored yet. I think the case has been made that a traditional get a dozen vans and move a contiguous group of people all at once into a place we’d remodel for it maybe doesn’t make sense.”
In spring, a community taskforce recommended re-locating DOB operations and 78% of the public supported the idea in a survey. As Patchak points out, the taskforce didn’t know the re-location cost before making its recommendation and neither did the public before the survey.
District officials also say DOB needs $2.8 million in work over the next 10 years. They clarified an estimate of $8.6 million given by a district-hired consultant in 2022 was for needs over 30 years.
