Monday, the Horry County Board of Education voted to spend about a quarter of a million dollars to fix the Socastee High School Track
The unanimous decision comes after the board already spent about $350k dollars on the track.
The district originally intended the track to be a cheap-fix; a quick resurfacing for about $150k total.
Then problems started popping up and the price kept going up.
The track project started during the summer of 2014.
District officials say it was supposed to be finished in time for the following spring track season, but even after hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested into the track it was still unusable.
“Look, that track lasted an awful long time for how it was built,” said Board Chairman, Joe Defeo.
The district says the project ran into two major issues during construction.
The ground the track was built on was unstable, and the track was not measured correctly.
Two things the district was not aware of before the project started, because it did not have the plans from when the original track was built in the 80’s.
“It was built by parents, which is a great thing they did, but it was not built to the standards that we would have built back in that day,” said Defeo.
As construction started, the problems became apparent; until construction was eventually put on halt due to football season and to allow the district to regroup.
Now the project will cost nearly $600k in total; which is what a new track would have cost in the first place.
The district says the cost saving attempts did not work, but they are not about to leave a job unfinished for the Socastee students.
“It is just not the way to go, and once you found out that it’s wrong you fix it right and move on,” said Defeo.
There is no official start date for the track construction to begin again, because district officials were waiting on confirmation.
However, they do say the track will be ready by this upcoming spring season.
