Senate Rejects Stricter Snow-Load Rules For School Roofs

Sen. Shawn Keough waged a fight in the Senate on Monday, but her bill to require stricter snow-load standards for school roofs failed by five votes.

The measure, which Keough, R-Sandpoint, and Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, pushed in response to the collapse of three school roofs under heavy snow in Sandpoint this winter, died on a 15-20 vote.

Sens. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden, and Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum, were among those voting against the proposal.

“We need to address head-on the question of whether our children are safe,” Keough told the Senate.

SB1180 would have required school roofs to meet standards set in a University of Idaho study that examined snowfall and other factors around the state.

For Bonner County, the study calls for roofs that can withstand snow loads of up to 100 pounds per square foot. Bonner schools were built to a standard of 40 pounds per square foot.

Keough said roofs on school buildings in Boundary County were built to withstand only 30 pounds per square foot - leaving them vulnerable.

“I cannot in good conscience send my 7-year-old or any of the children of Idaho to schools that are in this condition,” Keough said. “This is the right thing to do, and I urge your support.”

In addition to setting the higher standard for new school buildings, the bill would have required all existing school buildings to be inspected. Districts would have had to have developed plans to fix those found short of the standard.

Sen. Robert Lee, R-Rexburg, said he wouldn’t mind the standards for new buildings but applying them to existing schools “carries a big, big price tag.”

He added, “I suggest that some of the problems for existing buildings could be solved with buying a few shovels and getting on with the work.”

Sen. Evan Frasure, R-Pocatello, said he thinks the bill could “bankrupt the state.”

Sen. Denton Darrington, R-Declo, suggested, “There’s a way out for these good people in Bonner and Boundary counties. … Their county commissioners … could adopt, by ordinance, the University of Idaho snow-load standards.”

Darrington didn’t realize that Bonner County commissioners recently repealed all of the county’s building code standards.

Sen. Jack Riggs, R-Coeur d’Alene, spoke out in favor of Keough’s bill. “I saw the photographs of the Sandpoint roofs that collapsed,” he said. “There is no question in my mind that if students had been sitting in those seats, there would’ve been fatalities.”

After the vote, Crow said he opposed the bill because “it was an unfunded mandate to school districts.

“There’s nothing that prohibits the Bonner County school district from doing that themselves,” he said.

, DataTimes