Charlo replaces water-damaged gym floor
KRISTI NIEMEYER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 2 years, 1 month AGO
Kristi Niemeyer is editor of the Lake County Leader. She learned her newspaper licks at the Mission Valley News and honed them at the helm of the Ronan Pioneer and, eventually, as co-editor of the Leader until 1993. She later launched and published Lively Times, a statewide arts and entertainment monthly (she still publishes the digital version), and produced and edited State of the Arts for the Montana Arts Council and Heart to Heart for St. Luke Community Healthcare. Reach her at [email protected] or 406-883-4343. | November 15, 2023 11:00 PM
The floor in Charlo School’s old gym, damaged after a pipe burst beneath it last month, will be replaced according to Superintendent Steve Love.
The leak was discovered Oct. 2 by a school custodian. Water was shut off for the entire facility, which includes two gymnasiums, and a crew discovered that a water pipe running beneath the floor of the old gym had ruptured, perhaps due to settling between the old section and the newer one.
Although water didn’t flow directly over the gym floor, it did course through the stringers that support it, causing the floor to buckle.
In his weekly newsletter, Love said the old gym floor is being completely removed, including the stringers, and the concrete substructure has sensors drilled into it to measure moisture.
“Once those readings are acceptable to the flooring company and the new wood has had time to acclimate, they will begin installing the new floor,” Love wrote.
The district must pay a deductible of $2,500, he said, and the insurance company will cover the balance of the replacement cost, which is estimated at $268,000.
"If everything goes well we hope to back on it in early January," Love said.
ARTICLES BY KRISTI NIEMEYER
County, Tribes still wrangling with state for PL 280 money
Funding for Public Law 280 – the federal legislation that governs how felonies involving tribal members are prosecuted on the Flathead Reservation – continues to evade Lake County and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, which have yet to secure a promised payment of $1.25 million apiece from the State of Montana.
Polson Commission weighs pros, cons of second fire station
The debate over the potential location of a second fire station for the City of Polson elicited questions and suggestions at a public workshop Monday night, held prior to the regular city commission meeting.
Rotarians disperse free dictionaries to third graders in Lake County
To all those cynical adults who think dictionaries have gone the way of dinosaurs, replaced by omnipresent search engines: third graders across Lake County beg to differ.