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ST. PAUL If there was any confusion among St. Paul school officials about whether they would have to renovate their school to meet fire codes, State Fire Marshal John Falgione laid it to rest Monday.
"There is no grandfathering in any of the life safety codes," Falgione told the board. "There never has been."
Those sobering words mean the district must meet every tenet of an 18-point order from Falgione's office regardless of whether a bond issue for an addition to the school passes this fall.
Many older school buildings in the state don't meet current fire codes, either. But St. Paul's officials like many others in the state had believed that those deficiencies would be grandfathered in until a renovation or an addition triggered an inspection from the fire marshal's office.
Not so, Falgione said Monday. Every district is required to meet current codes as soon as violations are found, but an understaffed department severely limits those discoveries in the first place.
"It's nobody's fault that these things are allowed to go on," Falgione said. "It's just that we don't have the manpower to go in and inspect every school in the state."
Falgione didn't say what did trigger the investigation, which was conducted by Deputy Marshal Don Fritz. But it revealed widespread breaches of codes, from windowless classrooms to wide-open stairwells and wooden door frames.
The district is in the process of getting cost estimates on complying with the codes. But the deficiencies found were similar to those in a study of the school last fall by Bahr Vermeer Haecker architects of Lincoln.
That study estimated that those violations could be rectified with $467,000 of improvements, including a $328,750 sprinkler system throughout the building.
Those changes have been factored into the potential renovation projects the district is considering, so Falgione said his office's order would be satisfied if a bond issue for such a project were passed this fall.
But Superintendent Doug Ackles said that if the bond issue doesn't pass, the district would not be able to pay for the fire upgrades while remaining under the state-mandated levy lid of $1.05 per $100 taxable valuation.
The board would have to make difficult decisions about how to allocate the district's funds to pay for the changes over several years, Ackles said.
"Will the fire marshal's office be patient with us and wait and see if that bond issue passes?" Ackles asked Falgione.
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