Approval of five capital projects was among the items of business at Tuesday's regular meeting of the Pueblo City Schools (D60) board of education.

The three-hour session, which also included reports on a mill-levy override survey and enrollment projections, was the first for recently elected board members Dennis Maes and Taylor Voss.

The district's aging facilities and structures continue to take a toll on the capital project fund.

This time, the most expensive allocation was for $349,779 to replace an air handler unit at Centennial High School.

From the same capital projects fund, $105,904 will be spent to replace a boiler at South High School; $39,170 to purchase new work stations and fund remodeling related to the relocation of Exceptional Student Services staff; $31,790 to replace bleachers at Central High School; and $7,107 for the repair and partial replacement of a sewer line at Sunset Park Elementary School.

While this particular batch of expenditures is in the neighborhood of half a million dollars, it's merely the tip of an increasingly perilous iceberg that has easily surpassed the $400 million mark.

And that princely sum is expected to increase by 12 percent each year as construction and materials costs rise.

The precarious state of the district's facilities and structures was extensively illustrated in both a video and oral presentation on a facilities master plan led by Bob Lawson, D60's executive director of facilities, and Cody Knoblock and Josh Grenier, representing Wold Architects.

Lawson said the facilities master plan has been in progress for more than two years and includes criteria from a 2015 facilities assessment and recommendations from Wold Architects and the district's own tracking process and inspections.

Per a building renovation summary, more than $173 million in critical building repairs will be needed within two years, the board learned. In a decade's time, that figure is expected to balloon to an astronomic $506 million.

Said Lawson, "School buildings and their related infrastructure components are beyond their intended life," with most from 50-70 years old. And while district staff has labored heroically to extend the life expectancy of schools, little more can be done to keep obsolete and often decrepit machinery and systems functional and, in turn, schools open.

The hundreds of millions in needed renovations, Lawson cautioned, "does not include all of the upgrades and improvements in the classrooms that the Wold study identified" through public meetings and discussions with a stakeholders group.

In the arena of building repairs, immediate needs identified by Wold include electrical repair/replacement at East and South high schools, major structural issues at Centennial, and rectification of settlement damage at five different schools -- undertakings that will cost the district more than $177 million.

Program-driven improvements -- early childhood, career and technical education; specialized programs; and updating buildings in line with 21st century learning -- would cost more than $70 million.

To bring facilities into compliance with ADA requirements and increase security, the district will have to expend more than $14 million -- a small figure when compared to the $110 million required to adequately address air conditioning and heating needs.

All in all, $428 million, which led the Wold spokesmen to offer a suggestion of replacement rather than remodeling.

"The question is, should we be putting more money into this or should we start from scratch?" Grenier asked the board. "The group talked a lot about that.

"There were also conversations around consolidation, and the pros and cons of that."

And while parents often prefer smaller schools, it was noted that such institutions are more costly to maintain. "Larger schools come with inherent efficiencies," Grenier added.

The next step, Lawson said, is continuation on the road to building a district master plan "and how that will carry us into whether it be a bond or the next 50-year plan of what we're going to do with our schools."

jpompia@chieftain.com