The starting date for stadium renovations and a junior high school expansion project in Palmerton Area School District remains up in the air as the date for bid advertisement draws closer.

On Tuesday night, the school board voted to start the project in either April or December 2017 with the completion dates to be decided before bid documents do go out to prospective contractors.Before the vote, a lengthy discussion centered on how a turf field and an all-weather track installation would impact the athletic teams that use the high school stadium including football, soccer and track and field.Robert Korp, of the Barry Isett and Associates engineering firm, initially gave the board two options.The first is to put the project out to bid in January 2017 with work at the stadium running from April 1 through July 31, 2017, meaning the stadium would be ready for the fall sports season.The short time frame, however, could lead contractors to bid higher, Korp explained."They'll want to cover themselves for any liquidated damages if for whatever reason they didn't finish by that July 31 date," he said. "It can be done in that time frame, but that is the risk you run. Typically, the more time you give them, the lower the bid will be."A second option presented by Korp has the district putting the project out to bid in late summer 2017 with work on the stadium starting after the 2017 football season and being completed by July 31, 2018.The majority of board members said Tuesday they would like to get bids on both options, with the possibility of extending the completion date on option one to give the contractor more time.That could mean a few home football/soccer games in 2017 would be in jeopardy. The first two varsity football contests for 2017 are already road games.Whether the work starts in April or December 2017, Palmerton will likely have at least one track season where it can't use the facility.The 13,420-square-foot addition to the existing Palmerton Junior High School building will be bid together with the stadium improvements.Board member Sue Debski asked whether the projects could be split, but Korp said it's "cleaner" to keep them together."There is fill from the junior high project going to the practice field, so they are connected," board member Barry Scherer said.According to Korp, Palmerton Borough and Lower Towamensing Township have not signed off on final plans for the projects and won't until the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation issues its highway occupancy permit."We're kind of at the mercy of PennDOT right now," Korp said. "We've made the adjustments in the plans that they asked us to make and as soon as we get that, we can get on the schedule for borough and township approval. The reality is all those approvals may not finish up until February."