To the editor:

Last week, on April 24, the School Building Committee received bad news when our general contractor bids were opened and showed a deficit of $10 million.  Frankly, we were stunned. Two sets of estimators and other professionals auditing them had costed out our design and found it to be within our $75 million construction budget.

We were very disappointed and upset with this result.  As with most disappointments and failures in life, what is most important is how you move forward to fix the problem.  Here is what the School Building Committee is doing in that regard:

The Project Management and Design Team has been meeting with the three general contractors who bid the project over the last several days to find out where the problem areas lie so that we can correct those and redesign to lower the costs. They are also listening to comments made by subcontractors on why their bids were higher than expected. They are in touch with the MSBA and their share of the project funding remains intact.

The Design Subcommittee is meeting this week to hear the immediate results of the assessments and make a plan of how to move forward.

The architect, who will bear all of the costs of the redesign and rebid, is working with the project management team to address their findings and make the building design more simple to build, greatly reducing the costs.

While there may be a need for some minor space reductions, at this time we are focusing on design changes that minimize the impact to the educational program.  

There is no plan to ask the town for more money and there will be no additional costs to the town from the project management team or architect for this process of redesign and rebid. Interest costs are not accruing because the final bonds for funding the project have not been issued.

Our next SBC meeting will be on Thursday, May 9 at 6 p.m.  We will have more information at that time to answer any of your questions and concerns.

Dianne M. Baron

Chairwoman, School Building Committee