School Board asks for reconsideration of costs before beginning schematics for community bond project

At the most recent school bond meeting, a teleconference with design architects Carlos Sierra and Dale Lang, Orcas Island School District (OISD) board member Scott Lancaster cut to the chase with his question, “What do we need to do to drive this thing home?”

Lancaster’s question came after a lengthy presentation on June 25 of the breakdown of costs for the modernization plan, which has been in the design stage for the last two years. The chief component of the modernization plan is the design for the “flat-roofed” buildings – the middle school, the library and the district office.

Sierra’s opinion was that the cost for the bond would be approximately $25 million.

He broke down the costs to include 35% project development costs – taxes, permits, surveying, construction contingency fee, legal, architectural, engineering and geo-technical fees, printing, and cost for a project manager.

Orcas’ location adds $4 million to the cost, Sierra said, for the costs of traveling from the mainland to the island.

Other markups include overhead, profit and escalation costs.

“The mark-ups seemed extremely high, even to myself and Dale,” Sierra told the board. “When I looked at the numbers, I had a heart attack.”

Charlie Glasser repeatedly emphasized that the board needed to consider the bond in light of “realistic” figures of the current economy.

“The plan calls for basing standards on a market that doesn’t exist anymore. This is a dramatic time economically and we should take advantage of it to take this substantially downward.

“Before we set the bottom line, I’d like to see an analysis of numbers that are current, not the standard everyone has lived by the last 20 years.”

Sierra called it a worthwhile exercise and said he would provide the numbers by “early next week.” He also said that phasing

In answer to a question posed by Janet Brownell, Lang said that the price goes down “when the cost model controls the budget.”

Tony Ghazel said he was “very interested” using island contractors and sub-contractors to both save on the location factor and to add to the local economy.

Ghazel and Brownell both emphasized that they want the design to reflect a community education facility that the community can access for continuing education and job skills training. Keith Whitaker pointed out that this aspect can “create opportunities for funding grants that create revenue, offsetting the costs.”

Kari Schuh, OISD Career and Technology Education Director said that in addition to the community service aspect of a “ramped up” CTE building, training middle school students in math, science and technology classes can help prevent drop-outs and can also “garner extra dollars” from state funding programs.

Reducing square footage was considered to lower costs, and addition of some elements can be phased in.

Lang advised the board, ”You should have a bottom line and work from both ends – the schematics, choose materials and start cutting costs and programs without compromising too much.”

The next step in nailing down real numbers would be a set of schematic plans. The cost of such plans could be borne from the $300,000 left over from the current bond, dedicated to the construction of the CTE building.  The board is considering this next step.