Bids For New High Schools Delayed
The Central Valley School District still expects to seek bids from builders for its two new high schools this summer, but the process will be delayed by a few weeks.
Project leaders updated school board members on the slowdown at Monday’s meeting.
“The cost estimate just came out of the hopper. It’s 1.35 percent over (the planned budget),” said Steve McNutt, one of the architects working on the new Central Valley and University high schools.
Architecture firms usually estimate the cost of their projects before asking for construction bids.
“That’s not bad,” he added, ”but on a $32 million project that’s over $431,000.”
McNutt presented the board with a list of 22 money saving modifications to the original plan for the high schools. His suggestions included reducing the main gym score boards from four to two and lowering the number of security cameras from 39 to 16.
The board raised some concern over the loss of the security cameras.
“I see that the list says we can add more in the future,” said board member Kay Bryant. “I’m not convinced that we should wait for the future to secure our students.”
Mike Pearson, director of secondary education for the district, assured Bryant the list would be scrutinized before it was finalized.
He also noted that many of the schools the district surveyed had fewer than 10 security cameras.
“When we came here we’d hoped to say we were done with the plans,” said McNutt. “But we’re getting very close. We have exhaustive internal efforts to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.”
Before the district can apply for financial support from the state for the construction process, the projects electrical, mechanical and structural components must be reviewed by an independent firm.
The district hopes to complete the review before the next board meeting on June 26.
After the district receives a commitment from the state, the projects will be ready for construction bids.
Bids should go out on Aug. 3 for Central Valley High School and Aug. 29 for University High School, McNutt said.
“The state’s prevailing wage scale goes up on September 1,” he added. “We’d like to get it in under that wire.”