By Dawn De Busk
Staff Writer

CASCO — One elected official is worried that the Memorial School’s roof won’t weather much longer.

“I wanted a quicker timeline for the Memorial School. I’m not sure if it can survive past this winter,” Casco Board of Selectman Ray Grant said on Feb. 15, one week after the board voted to resolve the issue through two bidding processes.

Casco Town Manager Dave Morton said it would be difficult to fast track the bidding process.

Not only is preparing the bid paperwork time-consuming, but first the town will use the bidding process to hire a professional firm to assist with preparing the bid requests for the Memorial School job, Morton said.

Making the structure viable again will be a job that has many dimensions, many options, depending on what level of roof damage is found once construction begins.

When the school job goes out to bid, potential contractors will be asked to provide several different costs: 1. Remodeling the building and doing roof repairs; 2. Doing renovations if roof-decking repair and/or other additional work is required; 3. Coming up with sketches for building a new structure from the ground up.

Therefore, the decision to tear down and rebuild, or save and renovate, won’t be made until the bids are in.

On Feb. 8, the board agreed to develop the Request For Proposals (RFPs) so the Memorial School project could go out to bid. The vote was 3-2, with Selectmen Carroll Morton and Grant opposing.

After another close vote, selectmen decided to go through an initial bidding process to hire the firm to develop the RFPs. That vote was also 3-2, with Chairman Barbara York and Selectman Paul Edes dissenting.

The amount remaining in the Memorial School fund is $10,500, and a portion of that money will be used to pay the professional firm that is awarded the bid to assist selectmen with the RFPs.

During discussion prior to the Feb. 8 vote, Casco resident Wayne Ward expressed impatience with the project timeline.

“It seems we are postponing this until the building falls down,” Ward said. “When I was on the building committee, it was advised that the building just be torn down. The town has spent $10,000 to $30,000 just to look at the building and design plans. What makes you think that the design-build concept is going to solve these problems? I just don’t understand why we spend so much money on this research.”