{"id":45164,"date":"2021-08-17T22:21:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T04:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-to-discuss-facility-updates-at-tuesdays-board-meeting\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:23:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:23:45","slug":"montezuma-cortez-to-discuss-facility-updates-at-tuesdays-board-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-to-discuss-facility-updates-at-tuesdays-board-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez to discuss facility updates at Tuesday\u2019s board meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Montezuma County RE-1 School District Board of Education met Tuesday night to discuss the upcoming school year.<\/span>Photo via YouTube<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Lakeview School property is an action item on Montezuma-Cortez\u2019s regular board meeting Tuesday.<\/p>\n

It follows an Aug. 3 work session discussion about revitalizing the district\u2019s structures.<\/p>\n

The board was presented with a few options concerning Lakeview School, which closed in 2008.<\/p>\n

The district can keep it as a space for storage and meetings, sell or lease it to a party for school-related purposes, ask for 100% of the ownership rights from the property\u2019s current owners or quick-claim the property interest and release itself of ownership, said Kyle Archibeque, executive director of district finance, at the work session.<\/p>\n

In 1905, J.H. Mccracken issued a quick-claim deed granting the district ownership of Lakeview.<\/p>\n

However, a clause in the agreement stated that if any part of the school\u2019s land be abandoned for public school purposes for a year or longer, Mccracken heirs would have rights to it.<\/p>\n

Archibeque said he was summarizing the legal opinions of the district\u2019s general counsel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a duty to organize that building and get it ready for whatever we want to use it for, whether we\u2019re collapsing it, whether we\u2019re giving it back to the people who gave it to us, the cost of fixing the roof alone \u2014 do we really want to invest in something for a storage unit?\u201d said district Superintendent Risha VanderWey.<\/p>\n

In that meeting, the school board discussed a previous facilities master plan recommended by an architectural firm the district hired in 2011.<\/p>\n

In 2009, a Colorado Department of Education team surveyed the district\u2019s buildings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were talking about how we want to revisit this 2011 plan because we have the same issues with our buildings, because they weren\u2019t really addressed,\u201d said VanderWey at the meeting.<\/p>\n

She wants to explore transforming the district\u2019s properties with Archibeque and Raymond Lopez, director of maintenance for the district.<\/p>\n

Archibeque handed out copies of the 2011 facilities recommendations to the board.<\/p>\n

The recommendations touched on a few different levels of improvement. Costs ran from $45 million to renovate the school to replacing all buildings for $109 million.<\/p>\n

Archibeque found the 2011 master plan to still be relevant, although cost estimates are likely outdated, he said.<\/p>\n

The group of three will brainstorm and run their ideas for updates through administration and then have further conversations with the board and community, Archibeque said.<\/p>\n

They will then decide if they need to outline a new master plan, or if they can address immediate building needs with the old guide.<\/p>\n

The district would need to apply for a Building Excellent Schools Today grant and state matching to pull off the renovations, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a clear plan on what you\u2019re going to do to fix your house, then you get all those things done, and this is our house for many, many children and they deserve a place that\u2019s adequately fixed up for them,\u201d said VanderWey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RE-1 Board of Education is considering changes to the district buildings, including Lakeview School <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,167,216,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-local-news-lead","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86378,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45164\/revisions\/86378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45164"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}