School building remodel well over budget

The Sisters School Board learned last week that the remodel of the building in which it was meeting will cost the district 42 percent more than originally estimated.

Superintendent Ted Thonstad reported that remodeling the historic former high school to house administration offices will cost about $698,000 when completed. The original estimate was $492,000.

Thonstad also discussed overruns on two other 2005-06 capital projects, the purchase and setup of a two-classroom modular structure to serve the Flex program and the district’s share of extending Cascade Avenue past the administration building and creating an adjacent parking lot.

After a somewhat anguished discussion in which all board members and the superintendent agreed on the need for better project management, their colleagues asked board members Glen Lasken and Rob Corrigan to work with Thonstad to draft a set of procedures to be considered at the next meeting (Dec. 12).

“The community needs us to show (fiscal) responsibility,” board member Mike Gould declared. Many people think “a pattern (of overspending) is developing that goes back to the high school (completed in 2003).” Correcting this “may be the single most important thing we do.”

Board member Steve Rudinsky agreed, adding, “The community is saying we spend money before we have it. That’s what we were doing with the teachers’ contract.” Rudinsky and Gould recently voted against ratification of a new teachers’ contract and, minutes before the capital projects discussion took place, took the same position on a similar new agreement with classified employees.

Although he has been in office only a little more than a year, Thonstad took responsibility for the capital project overruns, saying, “Nobody is more unhappy about this than I am.” He pledged his best efforts toward preventing a recurrence.

In a subsequent interview, the superintendent emphasized that the administration building was old and many expenses were impossible to anticipate. At the same time, he said that it was structurally sound and the project was worth doing compared with the cost of a new building.

Unanticipated costs for the remodel included electrical system improvements (rewiring the building; the district had hoped to just upgrade old wiring), $22,000; work required by Central Electric Co-op, $22,619; a new phone system, $16,000; new doors (the district had hoped to use most of the old doors), $15,000; insulation, $12,000; acoustical tile, $11,500; and office equipment, $8,550.

Thonstad also distributed information about the other two projects experiencing overruns:

Street extension and shared parking lot — Originally estimated at $40,000, this project is now expected to cost $50,274. Change orders involving a new sidewalk on Locust Street, two additional catch basins with piping in the parking lot and other items were essentially unavoidable, Thonstad said, to meet city requirements and jointly determined needs of the three partners, including the library. The district is sharing one third of the cost of the Cascade Avenue extension and half the cost of the parking lot south of Cascade.

• Flex building — Originally estimated at $85,000 to $95,000, this price has been boosted to $139,900 partly by a decision to install infrastructure for a future concession stand/restroom facility for the neighboring football stadium, at a cost of $26,727. The total was also increased by a city requirement that the parking lot and driveway be paved ($10,000); a CEC charge for a transformer and electrical service ($4,464); and a decision to have contractors build and plumb the restrooms instead of doing it in-house ($7,000).

When asked later if he held anyone else in the administration responsible for the overruns, Thonstad said pointing fingers at others “is outside my management style, externally. If I point fingers it will be done internally. I have a concern about the fact that we had a project manager (Facilities Director Bob Martin) for this thing and maybe the financial piece didn’t get managed as well as it should. But ultimately it’s my fault, my responsibility.”

Can the problem be avoided in the future? “I came (to Sisters) from a school district (Condon) where I managed two bigger projects successfully and I have a little bit of an idea how these should be done,” Thonstad answered. “I had a construction committee (of board members) that approved everything. They heard the reasons for changes, so there were no surprises. We didn’t make any decision until the committee reviewed it.”

Thonstad said he wants to use that model for Sisters’ next large project, remodeling the middle school to make way for fifth graders who will move in next fall.

While this is roughly estimated at only $175,000, much less than the administration building remodel, he said it “will be done with hard estimates up front, with all costs anticipated.

“We’ll keep track of what we’re spending and where we’re at every week or every other week.”