School project budget gets tight

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REGION 16 — A big question remains unanswered as the school building project moves ahead — the cost for the new district office.

The new district office is the smallest part of the three-part project that includes the new Prospect Elementary School and renovations to Laurel Ledge Elementary School in Beacon Falls.

The current plan is to demolish Algonquin School in Prospect, with the exception of the annex, and build a new office on the site. Algonquin and Community schools will be closed once the new elementary school opens in the fall of 2015.

School officials currently don’t have a hard cost for the demolition and abatement of Algonquin School or building the new office. An old estimate puts the district office project at $2.5 million. However, that is not a firm number.

School Building Committee member Chris Borajkiewicz, who chairs the subcommittee working on the district office, told the Board of Education at its Sept. 10 meeting that estimate is old, adding the original plans for the district office have changed.

Originally, a part of Algonquin School was to be torn down and the rest renovated for the new office.

Other pieces of the project — such as alternates at Laurel Ledge School — hinge on the cost of the district office as the overall project budget is getting tight.

Voters in Region 16, which oversees schools in Beacon Falls and Prospect, approved bonding $47.5 million for the project in December 2011. The project’s budget is $46.7 million. The remaining money will cover the short-term interest and bond issuance cost.

Michael DiNallo, a project executive with the Turner Construction Company, provided a budget update to the board. The combined indicated cost for the new school and Laurel Ledge projects was roughly $43.6 million through August, DiNallo said. The new school budget is roughly $33.3 million, while the Laurel Ledge work is about $10.3 million.

This doesn’t include a combined $1.1 million in contingency funds for the two projects. After the contingency money is factored in, there was about $1.9 million left at the end of August for the district office, or roughly $600,000 short of the $2.5 million estimate.

Board member Robert Hiscox pointed to a delay in the local review process for the Laurel Ledge plans as a main contributor to the budget issues. The Laurel Ledge project is over budget, while the new school is under budget.

Officials initially hoped to bid both projects together, but due to the delay they were bid separately.

“It would have been ideal to bid those two projects together,” Hiscox said.

As the budget grows tighter decisions have to be made when it comes to alternates at Laurel Ledge.

Board of Education Vice Chair Priscilla Cretella said the cost for the district office is going to be very pivotal in what gets done under the project.

“Without that figure it’s unfair to the entire project,” she said.

The board approved moving forward with getting the necessary state and local approvals for the demolition and abatement plans for Algonquin last week. The approvals are needed before the work can go out to bid. The hope is bids can be in hand by the board’s Nov. 5 meeting.

In an effort to loosen budget constraints the board did move forward with one alternate — deleting the $409,000 set for a complete renovation of the kitchen at Laurel Ledge.

The issue was a sticking point for some on the board. The motion passed by a weighted 3-3 vote with one abstention. Prospect board member Roxann Vaillancourt was absent. The vote of Prospect members is weighted due to the school population ratio favoring the town.

Board member Sheryl Feducia, who abstained from the vote, was concerned that the wording of “delete all” in the motion would mean the work would permanently be removed from the project. She wanted to wait on approving the motion until more information was known on what, if anything, was a crucial need for the kitchen.

DiNallo said the kitchen is functional as is.

The Prospect members present voted in favor of the motion, while the other three Beacon Falls voted against it.

Cretella wanted to table the motion until the cost for the district office becomes clearer.

DiNallo said if the kitchen work remains in the project he would be concerned the books wouldn’t balance. He said the board would have to be informed on a weekly basis whether money needed to be spent to keep that option open, and the board would run the risk of overextending itself financially.

“By kicking the can down the road we’re running the risk that we write a check that we can not cash potentially,” he said.

Board Chair Donna Cullen said if the work is deleted that doesn’t mean some work can’t be done if there’s money available in the project’s budget or through the board’s capital budget.

A couple of other alternates were also brought up.

The board tabled a vote on the $173,000 alternate to add air conditioning in the Laurel Ledge gym. DiNallo said this isn’t as pressing of a matter as the kitchen work and can wait until January to be decided. A motion to OK a $13,000 alternate for 12 additional parking spaces at Laurel Ledge was also approved.

After the kitchen work was removed and parking spaces added in, about $396,000 was cut from the Laurel Ledge budget, leaving the overall project’s budget about $104,000 short based on the estimates at the meeting.

1 COMMENT

  1. Okay lets pull things out of an ongoing project which probably will resurface in a year or two as “necessary” new spending, in favor of a project that has not yet started and probably will have its own overruns when it is being built.

    So the BOE values parking spaces over air conditioning in the gym and the most important work – upgrading the kitchen. The decision of the BOE to select parking just because it is a cheap add-on just proves they are not thinking clearly.

    Put the funds into the Laurel Ledge kitchen first, air conditioning second and then parking if funds allow. Do the job right the first time.