One year later: The Ronan track

RONAN - Nearly a year after construction began on a new football and track and field facility at Ronan High School, questions still remain about its completion and future use.

Lake County Superintendent of Schools Gale Decker seems intent on asking those questions during public comment at Ronan School Board meetings each month, as he has for the last two meetings. If he is right, the beautiful new facility in Ronan will not host a multi-team track meet until major additions and upgrades are made.

Construction began on the facility in June 2009, and the majority was deemed complete by September 2009 for a Chiefs home football game. But Decker, who coached track and field for more than 15 years, has concerns with the specifications of various aspects of the new facility.

He initially suspected that the slope of the track, a high school mandated maximum of two percent from inside to outside, is too steep. He surveyed it in April with his son-in-law and found that it was within the guidelines, coming in at 1.78 percent at the finish line.

The majority of his concerns, which he has voiced at both the April and May school board meetings, come from the field facilities. The shot put ring, he said, has out-of-bounds lines that are cemented down when Montana High School Association guidelines say they must be chalk or fabric.

"It's a safety issue when you have a 12-pound shot put hitting cement and spraying chips in the air," Decker said.

The contractor put rubber stoppers on top, but even beside the safety issue, Decker said the school can never host a legal shot put competition because of the discrepancies. The size of the facility handcuffs the district as well, Decker said, as more long jump pits and other additions would be needed to facilitate a major, multiple-school meet.

Another complaint Decker had that he voiced during the meeting included the preparation for the construction, and the lack of a public meeting to discuss the project.

District No. 30 Superintendent Andy Holmlund said there are many issues still remaining and Knife River, the construction firm in charge of the facility, will not be paid in full until they are remedied to the satisfaction of the school district.

"This is a very specific process," Holmlund said. "We are where we need to be."

Holmlund has narrowed down some of the items the district needs fixed before the job is complete. He said the high jump pad "is not to spec" and that there is concern over the shot put border, which he hopes to have corrected.

The process of building the facility is similar to building a house, Holmlund said, and he and the engineers will discuss the product in September, a year after "significant" completion of the facility.

"To be technically correct, it's not a one-year anniversary," he said. "We will go over our punch-list items, go over the final corrections, and at the final conclusion we'll have everything as it needs to be."

As for planning, Holmlund admitted that hindsight is 20/20. He said public input wasn't considered as much because of timing issues and the board's hope to have the facility ready for fall 2009 at the lowest cost.

"In 100 percent retrospect, I could see 100 different ways to go," Holmlund said. "We didn't mean to be exclusionary."

The purpose of the facility, he said, was to get a good foundation for the district before targeting larger expansion.

"It was always, we're going to get one of everything for our kids," Holmlund said.

Now that that goal has been achieved, Holmlund said serious expansion talks could begin, but all depends on the economy and decisions the trustees decide to make.

"Now the board will undertake the issue of whether they want to expand to get things that were not included in the original scope," he said, noting that additional runways and jump pits could be part of a longer term plan. "We are going to continue to get this addressed."