In Brookings, schools spruced up over summer

Inside Brookings High School, it's not hard to see what construction crews have been up to this summer: A new grand entrance, kitchen, lunchroom, offices for administrators and guidance counselors, green room/makeup room, set-building room, a completely renovated auditorium and much more.

While it's certainly beautiful, this Phase III renovation work is not typical of summer projects in Brookings schools. The updated bathrooms in the high school's main hallway and new, brighter lights in the senior hall those are more along the lines of your average summer projects.

"It depends on what's needed," said Brian Lueders, Brookings School District business manager, during a tour of the school buildings Tuesday. "Usually there's concrete and sidewalk stuff that gets repaired. Sometimes the parking lot. We try to do lighting.

"Then, there's different stuff that principals and teachers have asked for over the year that's put on a five-year capital outlay plan," he added. "That might be a project we do over the summer ."

Any sizeable project should show up on the five-year plan. Smaller projects can be completed with the district's contingency fund, which gets about $100,000 per year. Improvements that the district's insurance company advises such as adding sprinklers to the Hillcrest Elementary library usually come out of the contingency fund. Some things are addressed at every school building every summer : Patching cracks and repainting lines in the parking lot, replacing crumbled concrete in the sidewalks, painting walls, deep-scrubbing and waxing tile floors, and more.

Replacing carpet used to be on that list, with each building getting about $25,000 in new carpet per summer. But this year, only Mickelson Middle School got carpet about $80,000 worth.

"We used to do so much per building, but then the dye lots didn't match up," Leuders said, explaining that carpet in the hallway could end up being a different shade than carpet in a neighboring classroom. "This year, we switched to doing one building and tried to get it all done."

Carpet was replaced in Mickelson's office area, seventhgrade pod, eighth-grade locker rooms and health rooms.

Next year, the project will be completed with carpet in the sixth-grade pod, library and another health room. Medary Elementary is next on the list for new carpet.

This summer, Medary is completing installation of energy-efficient lights and "univents" in all its classrooms. That means Medary's heating and air-conditioning is all controlled by computer now, as it is in the district's other schools.

This will save money when staff set the building to run warmer this fall when they leave for the afternoon. The project was done with $456,000 in no-interest loans to be repaid over 10 years.

Medary also got a wall down the middle of its computer room, to create a Social Skills classroom, and changed one wall in its library.

Hillcrest Elementary's major summer project was new boys and girls bathrooms in the main hallway, which cost about $115,000. They replace outdated bathrooms that were not handicap accessible. A set of similar bathrooms (the boys includes one toilet stall, two open toilets and multiple urinals) is on the fiveyear capital outlay plan to be replaced in the next several years. Hillcrest also got a set of new steps this summer to replace ones where a block was starting to crack.

At Camelot Intermediate School, the district's newest building, the only summer construction was a new patch of concrete to connect a storage shed to the street, Leuders said.

Small updates were also made to the newly named Career and Technical Education Center, which was the East Central Multi District building. Its exterior has a fresh coat of beige paint and some new landscaping, while the interior has a new sprinkler system , windows and smaller updates. Leuders said this summer included more large-scale projects than is usual for the district.

"There were more bigger projects this year, like that bathroom, so there were less smaller projects ," he said.

Friends of Fresh and Green Academy Inc Helps Kids in Ethiopia

Friends of Fresh and Green Academy Inc, a registered non-profit charity that works to feed, educate, clothe, and provide medical care for children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is hosting its Third Annual Texas Hold'em Poker Charity Fundraiser on September 12th, 2011.  The event will be held in Manhattan at Connolly's Pub and Restaurant, 121 W. 45th Street, 3rd floor, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. The evening's festivities include professional dealers and tables, Texas Hold'em and Blackjack, Monday Night Football, premium open bar, and three hours of passed hors d'oeuvres.  Attendees also get $2,500 worth of chips. Beginners' tables and instruction will be available.

"Tables compete and those who win are eligible for some great prizes," says Trish Hack-Rubinstein, President and Co-founder of Friends of Fresh and Green Academy Inc. "The top three winners will receive prize packages valued at more than $1,500." Some of the prizes include a $1,000 gift certificate to Van Cleef & Arpels, Mets VIP seats and parking, year-long gym memberships, fine wine, helicopter rides over Manhattan, massage therapy vouchers, dinners for two at NYC restaurants, Broadway tickets, fine art photography, and much more.

"The money raised will ensure the children at the Academy continue to eat three meals a day. Last year's Poker and Casino Night raised more than $5,000 to benefit the students, and we're hoping to double that this year."

Loading... Symbols: Authors: Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP's CEO Discusses Q1 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP (BWP) Q1 2011 Earnings Call May 02, 2011 9:00 am ET

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q1 2011 Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP Earnings Conference Call. My name is Shantale, and I will be your facilitator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Ms. Allison McLean, Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Allison McLean

Thank you, Shantale. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the First Quarter 2011 Earnings Call for Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP. I’m Allison McLean, and I’m pleased to be joined today by Mr. Arthur Rebell, our Chairman; Mr. Rolf Gafvert, our CEO; and Mr. Jamie Buskill, our CFO.

If you'd like a copy of the earnings release associated with this call, please download it from our website at www.bwpmlp.com. Following our prepared remarks this morning, we will turn the call over for your questions.

We would like to remind you that this conference call will include the use of statements that are forward-looking in nature. Statements in this earnings call related to matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management’s beliefs and assumptions using currently available information and expectations. Actual results achieved by the company may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. The company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements made during this call.

I’d also like to remind you that during the call today, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA and distributable cash flow. With regard to such financial measures, please refer to our earnings release for reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Arthur Rebell.

Arthur Rebell

Thank you, Allison. As we have previously announced, Rolf told us last year that he looked forward to retirement in the near future. As our press announcement this morning noted, Stan Horton is joining Boardwalk today and will be the new CEO. Many of you know of Stan's distinguished record in the energy area and, hopefully, share our enthusiasm and welcome him as he leads Boardwalk into its future growth.

But I do want to take a moment and acknowledge the important role which Rolf has played in bringing Boardwalk from a small private company to one of America's leading public MLPs.

Rolf will remain an adviser to the company, and we know that he will continue to share his perspectives and advice with Stan and all of us. Rolf, thanks for your efforts and good luck.

And I will now turn the call over to Rolf.

Rolf Gafvert

Thank you, Arthur. Good morning, everyone. For the first quarter, we announced a quarterly distribution to unit holders of $0.5225 per unit. I will provide an update on our business, and then Jamie will discuss our financial performance in greater detail.

During the first quarter, a substantial portion of our pipeline capacity was contracted under firm agreements, and we experienced one of the coldest winters in the past 10 years, which helped us overcome overall weak market fundamentals. However, despite favorable weather conditions, declining price spreads between time periods impacted our storage and parking and lending services. For example, for the first quarter this year, parking and lending revenues were down approximately 65% over the comparable quarter in 2010 due to these unfavorable market conditions.

Should weak market fundamentals continue, our interruptible services, including parking and lending services and possibly firm contract renewals could be negatively impacted for the remainder of the year. These industry conditions led us to increase our distribution by $0.0025 per unit this quarter compared to the $0.005 increase in the previous quarter.

Although a relatively small portion of our overall business, net transportational revenues from power generators increased by more than 50% for the quarter compared to the first quarter of last year, as power providers signed up for firm services during the winter season. We are pursuing opportunities to add additional power generation facilities to our system, as operators review options for replacing older coal-fired power generation facilities.

During 2011, we are also adding compression to our system in order to create additional flexibility to better serve growing demand. In order to focus on expansion and acquisition growth opportunities, I am pleased to announce that during the first quarter, Jonathan Nathanson joined Boardwalk to head up our Corporate Development team.

That concludes my overview for Boardwalk. I would now like to turn the call over to Jamie, who will share with you the financial results for the quarter.

Jamie Buskill

Thanks, Rolf, and good morning, everyone. Operating revenues for the first quarter of 2011 were $311 million, an increase of $10 million or 3% from $301 million for the comparable period in 2010. The increase was driven by transportation revenues from our pipeline expansion projects, partially offset by $6 million lower parking and lending revenues due to unfavorable market conditions.

Turning now to operating expenses. We reported operating expenses of $181 million for the quarter, an increase of $8 million or 4% from $173 million for the comparable period in 2010. The increase was driven by expenses related to a fire at our Carthage compressor station that occurred in February. The incident had minimal impact to our gas flows, there were no injuries and we anticipate that insurance will the cover the loss. We expensed $5 million in the first quarter related to this incident, representing the amount of our deductible.

Operating expenses were also impacted by higher depreciation expense associated with our increased asset base and increased maintenance expenses. As we mentioned during last quarter's call, in January of this year, we issued $325 million of 10-year notes at our Texas Gas subsidiary, which carry a coupon rate of 4.5%. A portion of the proceeds were used to redeem $135 million of Texas Gas notes that carried a 5.5% coupon rate, and the remainder was used to pay down $190 million under our credit facility. In the first quarter, we recognized a $7 million loss due to the early redemption of the notes.

EBITDA for the quarter was $187 million, an increase of $6 million or 3% from $181 million for the comparable period in 2010. Net income for the quarter was $83 million, a decrease of $7 million or 8% from $90 million for the comparable period last year. Net income and EBITDA for the quarter were impacted by the revenue and expense drivers previously discussed, and net income was lower due to the early redemption loss of $7 million. We generated $113 million of distributable cash for the quarter. Growth capital expenditures were $16 million in the first quarter, and we expect to spend approximately $78 million for the remaining 3 quarters.