ORCHARD PARK SCHOOLS
District reconsiders bus garage location
Plans to move facility revisited
It’s time to move the Orchard Park Central School District bus garage, Superintendent Joan Thomas said Wednesday night.
It’s a sentiment held by her predecessors.
“Probably for 25 years we have tried to move the bus garage out of the middle of the village,” she told the School Board.
There have been committees and proposals, studies and referendums through the years, but still the garage remains on Lincoln Avenue behind the Middle School in the heavily populated Village of Orchard Park.
Neighbors have complained for years of fumes and noise.
The facility is not large enough to hold the district’s 85 buses. About 20 are parked at various elementary schools. They have been parked on Duerr Road and at Erie Community College. There was even a proposal several years ago to drive bus drivers to work, because there was no place for them to park their cars.
“We don’t have enough space,” Thomas said, adding that property on Duerr Road is being sold to the town, and it’s possible the district may not be allowed to park buses there.
“We really believe the time has come to seriously address this issue,” she said.
Thomas said other districts the size of Orchard Park have bus garages on seven to 10 acres of land.
“I don’t know if we have an acre. We’re crammed into this little spot,” she said.
She suggested the School Board tour the bus garage July 14, and then look at a similar facility in another district. She said it would be possible to build a corrugated metal bus garage relatively inexpensively.
Moving the buses to some other location in the district would allow the district to move the repairs back to the facility on Lincoln from property that costs $1,800 a month to lease. She said district officials have been looking for locations in the district that are isolated, but not too expensive.
Cam Morton, assistant superintendent for Human Resources, said there are many safety issues as well as vandalism and other issues involved with having 30 percent of the fleet parked off district grounds.
“For us to be efficient, it’s best to be at one location,” he said.
Board members agreed with the superintendent, and said the district should investigate moving the garage.
Also Wednesday night, board members unanimously re-elected Donald Sniezak president and Maria Lehman vice president.
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