By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
Staff Writer
Ortonville — On Dec. 18, during the regular meeting, the Brandon Board of Education approved the purchase of a refrigerator and freezer for Harvey-Swanson Elementary, not to exceed $111,000.
“This is approved to be paid for out of our food service fund,” said Jan Ziesel, district chief financial officer. “We do have an excess fund balance so we have to spend some money and this is a really good project to do that.”
They will be a split unit, and the freezer will go where the current dry storage is and the refrigerator will go in the office area of the kitchen. The locations are due to the amount of electrical, fire pull stations, and heating that would have to be rearranged otherwise. Currently the school is running off of portable refrigerators and freezers.
“Harvey-Swanson is the busiest kitchen, it does the most production, so we need space desperately over there,” said Monica Genslak, former food services coordinator. “So we’re going to take those freezers and refrigerators out of the hallways in the kitchen if you will, we’re going to replace those with dry storage. So we’ll have a lot more space, it’s going to be really great. It’s a needed project. Fortunately enough, we can use our own funds for that.”
The current refrigerators and freezers will be repurposed for other buildings.