School Board Divided Over Construction Bid

The Westlake school board was divided on spending again Monday night as members deliberated on a construction bid to build the new middle school. Officials voted three to two to accept a $2,377,500 bid from Great Lakes Crushing.

Board President Tom Mays, Vice President Carol Winter and member Andrea Rocco voted to accept the bid at the work session held at , while members Tim Sullivan and Nate Cross objected, saying that the bid was too high, and raising concerns about what will happen when the $84 million budget for Phase I of the Master Facilities plan runs out.

Sullivan objected to what he called a “lack of foresight” when the bond issue went on the ballot in May of last year.

“When we were telling the public, ‘Now is the time to build; this is the right economy,’ we told them costs would be lower because of the recession,” he said. “But costs will only go up. You don’t construct $84 million of schools based on that premise.”

Superintendent Dan Keenan disagreed, saying that safety, stability and size of the buildings was the main reason for the bond issue.

“Close behind is the amount of money we were putting into the buildings,” he said.

Keenan agreed with Sullivan that the bid environment is not as good as it was when voters passed the bond issue in 2010, but noted that the district is keeping a close eye on costs. He also assured the board and the audience that the district cannot spend more than $84 million for Phase I, which includes transforming into an intermediate school, building the new middle school and extensive renovations at , because that’s simply all the money there is.

“We had an original estimate that we upped, and readjusted some things in this,” he said. “It’s a difficult bid environment and it’s a continual discussion. If the bid were too high, we would have thrown it out.”

Keenan said that because petroleum and asphalt prices are high right now, the district put revised the bid package without some of the original components, hoping for better prices.

“[Prices] might go up,” he said. “That’s something we should all be concerned about. But we weren’t going to take a bid that projects the petroleum price to go up. What we need to do is go back and look at the budget and make sure that we do as much as we can on the front end. Our job is to work with the bid environment.”

Cross raised concerns that the district might have to scale back plans for the new buildings if money starts to run out too quickly.

“Maybe not with this item in particular, but we’re going to put ourselves into a corner and we won’t be able to deliver what we promised to the taxpayers.”

The conceptual budget for the work at the schools was put at $2,520,000.

When it came to the final decision, Sullivan said he would vote the bid award down, saying, “I imagine that we have three votes yes with no questions asked. We don’t want to hold the taxpayers hostage. We should have been more careful about promoting this issue as a low-bid environment.”

Keenan stressed that while some bids have come in over, and some have come in under, this particular bid is under the original, conceptual estimate.

Construction on the middle school is scheduled for completion in the winter of 2011/2012.