Out with the old: Council approves impact fees to replace crumbling sewer pipe at Laconia High School

LACONIA — City councilors approved the use of $85,000 in impact fees for the school district to mend a broken sewer pipe underneath the high school on Union Avenue during their meeting on Monday night.

“A sewer line in the oldest section recently failed, resulting in sewage backing up into the classrooms,” Mayor Andrew Hosmer said. 

The 130-foot-long hallway 1A, the oldest portion of the high school closest to the nearby Thai food restaurant and laundromat, has for several years proven problematic for school administrators. For the past several years, district business administrator Diane Clary said, a sewer pipe underneath the floor there has been backing up. 

“Our budget is, as you know, pretty tight this year,” Clary said Monday night. “We, in past years, might have had the extra funds to do that, but not this year.”

Last spring, while school was still in session, that pipe was backing up more frequently than in the past. Upon investigation, district employees realized the old cast iron pipe is disintegrating and needs to be replaced. It never burst but backed up significantly, at one point flooding a custodial drain around the first week of June. 

Of the $85,000 in impact fees allocated to the project, $58,860 will cover demolition and materials removal, $14,549 will cover new flooring, and plumbing work will cost $11,880. Contractors promised the school district the work would be completed by Friday, Aug. 22, before the 2025-26 school year begins and hundreds of students return to Laconia High School, and work is already underway.

“There is no contingency,” Clary said during the meeting. “I may have to come back to you if something bad happens, but I’m hoping for the best.”

Demolition company Dave Walton’s Interior Demolition Inc. is set to break up the flooring in that hallway and remove the pipe. Johnson & Jordan is in charge of the plumbing and will replace the cast iron pipe with new PVC — they’re a long-term partner of the district, and have done previous plumbing work at the high school — and National Granite Flooring will restore the floor of the hallway. 

The school district is using $85,000 in impact fees to complete the work, leaving them with $130,000 left over. 

“Impact fees are for this type of job,” Clary said on Tuesday afternoon. “Mostly used for infrastructure.”

Impact fees are assessed by the city upon developers based on the estimated impact to municipal infrastructure of a given development project. Those funds are allocated to various city departments, which use them for related infrastructure projects down the line, including “the municipality’s proportional share of capital facilities of a cooperative or regional school district of which the municipality is a member,” according to the city code.  

Those fees would generally be assessed on new development resulting in the creation of new dwelling units, conversion of a legally existing use which would result in an increase in the number of dwelling units, or construction resulting in a new nonresidential building, among other cases. 

Clary said the last time the school district used impact fees for a project was when they completed work for the playground at Pleasant Street Elementary School.