Boiler Replacement a Major Component of Referendum

The capital repairs and upgrades portion of the ’s school bond referendum, comprising about two-thirds of the overall million proposed project, includes boiler replacement at three of Fort Lee’s six public schools as a major component.

“Boilers like any other piece of capital equipment have a useful life; we have far exceeded those,” school board president Arthur Levine said Monday at a community forum at the . “At the other end of it, the efficacy of the boilers and that equipment is far reduced.”

Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds Jack Denichilo detailed Monday the age and efficiency of boilers at and , and at , explaining why school officials see replacement of the boilers as an urgent need and how replacing them would also reduce operating costs and increase safety.

Denichilo said the middle school’s boiler, for example, which would be replaced if the referendum passes, is about 50 years old.

“In terms of energy efficiency, you’re looking at maybe 50 [or] 60 percent energy efficiency; we’re looking to replace it with somewhere close to 100 percent efficiency,” Denichilo said.

School No. 1 is another site scheduled for boiler replacement under the proposed plan. There, Denichilo said, there are three boilers servicing three buildings.

“The Hoym building, which is 1964 construction; the Whiteman building goes to 1900 construction; and then you have the annex, which houses the board of education, which I think is 1964 also,” Denichilo said. “Before we spent a ton of money on maintenance and also repairs. They leak; the fire tubes burn out, and we’re not even into the heating season yet.”

School No. 4’s boilers, which would also be replaced, also date back to the 1960s, Denichilo added, saying that the concern there is “the even distribution of heat and ventilation throughout the school.”

“The scary part is that when it’s 20 degrees or 10 degrees out, one of these units is going to go,” Denichilo said. “And you either have to come in and bring in a portable heating system—and you’re looking at about $5,000 a day to heat a school like the middle school.”

Fort Lee Councilman Jan Goldberg, who has toured the schools and said he supports the referendum, said, “It’s amazing when you see the condition of some of the boilers.”

“It’s very hard to get parts for some of these boilers,” Goldberg said. “Some of them, you can’t even get [parts] anymore because the boilers are so old.”

Levine said that if a boiler goes down, the school district would be to some extent hamstrung, and that in such an event, “we cannot keep the children in the school; we would have to let them out.”

“Several times during this year, we’ve had some fire and smoke issues associated with that,” Levine said. “And again, if a boiler shuts down, we have to shut down the school. And certainly, yes, we could go out and rent that equipment at an extremely high cost, assuming we get fairly quick permission from the state.”