Charles City County school buses soon will be serviced at a new bus garage, but some residents question whether the school system needed the $500,000 facility this year.

School officials said a replacement for the existing garage, located on state Route 615 at the back of an old high school complex, is long overdue.

The new facility sits on 20 acres next to the middle school-high school complex on state Route 155.

Officials say the existing garage dates back to the 1940s. The cinder-block structure is so small that mechanics have difficulty working on the buses and most of the service work is sent out of the county.

"The old garage could not fit the whole bus in," School Board Chairwoman Barbara C. Crawley said. "It had served its purpose."

About $53,000 has been spent this school year on outside contracting for maintenance for the county's 20 buses, said Curtis S. Finney Jr., the system's finance director.

Though school officials say having the new facility will mean more of the work can be done in-house and save money, Finney said he couldn't determine how much the system expects to spend on bus maintenance next year.

In addition to the garage, the land will be used for another school, whenever the county needs to add one.

Melvin D. Robertson, the school system's director of administrative services, said officials had hoped the garage would have been operational by now, but construction delays held up progress. They received the occupancy permit May 16.

Some things were left to be done last week, including paving the access road to Virginia Department of Transportation specifications, Robertson said. Once that is complete, the garage can be used.

Helena May, project manager with Grand Metro Builders, the company building the garage, said soil testing took longer than expected because of bad weather. She also confirmed last week that paving would be done.

Some county residents, however, take issue with the new garage.

John Tabb Sr. called the garage's price tag too steep and called the area around the garage a poorly drained sinkhole. He also questioned whether having the new facility would save money on bus-maintenance costs, because much of the work is contracted.

Another resident, Steven D. Fuhrmann, who ran unsuccessfully for a School Board seat last year, said the school system spent $500,000 to build the new garage, yet recently cut teaching positions for the 2008-09 school year.

The school system's 2007-08 budget is nearly $13.2 million.

Fuhrmann said school officials could have spent less money to expand the existing garage to accommodate buses rather than build a new facility.

In a school system with among the lowest Standards of Learning test scores statewide, "every dollar should be sharply focused on increasing student achievement," Fuhrmann said.

Contact Holly Prestidge at (804) 649-6945 or hprestidge@timesdispatch.com.