GISD Board of Trustees President Larry Glick said at the Tuesday, Oct. 13 board meeting that he was “perplexed” when he saw reports on cost increases of two major bond projects that are over budget.
“I think I know numbers pretty well and so I went back to the pages on the career tech [center] and the natatorium and was surprised at the increase in the price of the career tech but… I was shocked at the price for the natatorium,” Glick said.
The percentage increase on the career tech center, as reported Sept. 21 by Herschel Acosta, a representative from Jacobs Company who is overseeing the bond projects, 13 percent over the original amount told to the bond committee and voters and the natatorium costs were reported to be more than 40 percent over what was originally stated.
Glick called a special meeting when he noticed these differences. He expressed less concerned about the increase for the career tech center than that for the natatorium. He explained that the purpose of the career tech center is to have students college/business ready upon graduation and the facilities and equipment should be equal to what the students will have in college. For those that go into the workforce upon graduation, the expectation is to offer as many career paths as possible and prepare the students so they are ready to meet industry standards in their chosen careers.
He added that after the called special meeting, he was still confused about the natatorium because the number of square feet discussed in the meeting was not a number he had previously heard.
“When I spoke again to Mr. Acosta, he said that not only was the footage wrong but if we built it at footage that was given to us by our architects, the amount was wrong,” Glick said. “So, the number we gave to the voters, but first to the bond committee [approximately $22.5 million] was not only wrong in footage but also wrong in amount.”
According to Glick, the board and administration had made some adjustments including the addition of deck space, increase in amount of storage, addition of lockers, addition of 100 seats and addition of one extra lane to the size of one of the pools. (There are three pools – the main pool, a diving pool and the third which will be used to teach second graders to swim and for special needs students.)
These adjustments made by the board and administration cost approximately $500,000. Engineers and architects added a few things as well including more parking spaces and a different filtration system and the total cost of those changes was $1.4 – $1.5 million.
Glick said that they hope to make up the extra costs with other projects that come in lower than budgeted.
“I think that will be the mixture that we look at – some will come in higher some will come in lower,” he said.
“Again we’ll be talking about this in much more detail and hopefully we’ll get reports from our architects as to how we started out with such a low number,” Glick said. “That’s the thing that still to this day makes me lose sleep and frustrates me beyond belief that we had those numbers that don’t make any sense and no one yet has said how we got those numbers.