John Nuraney and Richard Lee got a big present in their Christmas in July stockings from their bosses last week.

With less than 10 months left until the 2009 provincial election, the Ministry of Education announced $37.4 million for seismic upgrades for four Burnaby schools. Two fall in Lee's Burnaby North riding. Gilmore community school's will cost $8.9 million while Capitol Hill elementary's price tag is $6 million.

But the big present was a $50.6 million rebuild of Burnaby Central, which is just inside the boundary of Lee's Burnaby North riding. Most of the school's students, however, reside in the new riding of Burnaby-Deer Lake, which is where Nuraney will run. His likely NDP opponent? None other than school board chair Kathy Corrigan, who, along with the rest of the district's trustees, has been lobbying a long time for Central to be replaced.

A first look a few years back pegged estimates to bring Central up to proper seismic standards at just under $30 million. But upon further review, the experts realized the structure constructed in the 1950s, like many of Burnaby's other schools, needed even more work than first thought. That put the price tag for making it seismically sound well over $40 million.

The climbing costs didn't stop there, though. If all that work was to be done, the school's mechanical infrastructure would be incapable of functioning and would need to be replaced. For the same price or only a few million bucks more they could build a state-of-the-art structure for today's state-of-the-art students. Logic dictated a replacement. But logic and political bureaucracy rarely get together. Logic and political expediency, however, occasionally do.

That's not to say that's the case in this instance. But Nuraney and the BC Liberals know Corrigan will be a formidable foe come next May, if she gets the NDP nomination she's seeking. And with Burnaby North being a traditionally blue collar area, the New Democrats have their eyes on knocking off Lee, too. With the Burnaby Central project getting the go ahead, Nuraney and Lee will get to tell voters the BC LIberals came through for their sons and daughters.

The school district wouldn't mind seeing Lee get a couple of other big presents. Burnaby North's seismic upgrade was pegged last fall at around $25 million. The city's biggest school, which houses 2,400 students in two buildings, has an aging mechanical infrastructure also in dire need of upgrading, with or without making it earthquake proof. The district figures, like Burnaby Central, common sense dictates North should be consolidated into one brand new, seismically sound building.

Just down Parker Street, Alpha secondary, another 1950s era structure, is in a similar situation. Its seismic upgrade is estimated at more than $15 million.

Nuraney and Lee's BC Liberal brother Harry Bloy wasn't left without anything in his stocking. Cariboo Hill secondary, in Bloy's new riding of Burnaby-Lougheed, will get a seismic upgrade of $18.6 million. Additionally Bloy was blessed recently with approval in principle for a new elementary school at SFU.

Interestingly enough, the smallest seismic upgrade announced last week was $3.8 million for Edmonds community school in Burnaby-Edmonds NDP MLA Raj Chouhan's riding.

Recently the province rejected funding for fixing the building envelope at Burnaby South, which will be part of Burnaby-Edmonds following the next election. The ministry balked at the more than $13 million cost and asked the district to develop a proposal to complete the project in phases.

Previously, the ministry approved a seismic upgrade for Douglas Road, just down Canada Way from Burnaby Central, and for Chaffey-Burke elementary, only a couple of blocks from Nuraney's constituency office.

Holding on to the three Burnaby ridings will be a challenge for the BC Liberals. That being the case, city residents, along with Nuraney, Lee and Bloy, should expect more goodies in their stockings in the coming months.