Within three weeks, ground will be broken at the Centralia High School sports stadium.
That may seem early to some and will cause several high school and middle school track meets to be relocated to nearby towns such as Mexico, Hallsville and Sturgeon.
The athletic inconvenience comes with taxpayer savings, Steven Chancellor, Centralia R-VI Superintendent said.
He said there are two main drivers behind breaking ground in April, instead of during the summer.
“We’re taking advantage of downtime from the crews that do this kind of work. Lots of school districts who are going to do similar projects, have set constraints on these construction firms that they cannot start until school ends. Which means everyone’s going to have the same start time. Our flexibility and willingness to start early actually helped drive our cost down. From a labor standpoint… these companies are really sitting idle, waiting for school to end. So, we’re trying to take advantage of their downtime, their needing to pay their construction teams and being productive versus standing still. That helped us get a more competitive pricing structure.”
For the complete article, see this week’s edition of the Centralia Fireside Guard