Voters in the Cooperstown Central School District will decide on a $7.2 million capital project in May at the same time as the annual budget vote and school board elections.

The school board decided Dec. 6 to push back a vote on the project by two months in order to provide more leeway than a timeline provided by the project engineer allowed.

"There’s no error room in here," said CCS business manager Jim Collison. "Trying to meet this timeline is impossible."

The board also decided to add $40,000 more to the project’s cost during the work session last Wednesday in which the entire project was reviewed and aspects of the project still under discussion were finalized.

The $40,000 raised the total project cost to $7,212,660. The addition came on the advice of building and grounds supervisor Walter Bennett, who recommended that all of the middle/high school’s exterior doors be replaced.

The project already included $54,000 to replace the main entrance’s exterior doors, but Bennett asked the board to include $70,000 more to cover the cost of doing every door. He said many of the doors were in poor condition and really needed to have work done.

The net change of $40,000 came because the board removed $30,000 from the project in work to repair the roof seams at the bus garage.

The board also discussed breaking the referendum into several smaller pieces which would all go before voters at the same time. After some discussion, the board decided against that route.

"There’s so much integration ... we really can’t separate it out," said board president Anthony Scalici.

The board also briefly discussed the Concerned Citizens’ proposal that the second floor of the elementary school be closed to cut costs.

"Any decision to close the second floor now, is too complex a decision," Scalici said. "It’s not in the best interest of the institution."

The board began the work session by opening up the floor to members of the public who had questions or comments about the project.

Steve Mahlum started by thanking Scalici for contacting him and other residents about the meeting and about their concerns with the project. He said one of his biggest concerns was that the school did not seem to be addressing the issue of declining enrollment.

"I don’t see declining enrollment as being looked at during the budget process," he said. He asked the board to take a "good, hard look" at how money is spent, as there is only so much in a community to go around.

Cathe Ellsworth asked the school board to consider how the various renovations would impact the operating budget on a year-to-year basis.

Rick Hulse asked the board two questions he said were brought to him by district residents. One asked about moving the election to May in order to save costs. The other asked if the board would form a committee for fiscal responsibility made up of community and administration members.

The board later decided to combine the capital project referendum and annual budget vote, and said the idea of a fiscal responsibility committee would be addressed at the next operations, grounds and audit committee meeting.

Carl Good asked if 18 percent _ the total percentage of the project’s cost going to the engineering firm _ was excessive.

Scalici said the figure included a variety of expenses and was a fairly reasonable figure.

"Eighteen percent is not out of line," he said.

The board was expected to officially finalize the project’s scope at its meeting Wednesday night. That meeting took place after deadline.