School plans on hold
Carmichaels Area school officials are weighing their options after bids to renovate the elementary center came in over budget.
The school board is delaying a decision on how to proceed after opening the bids Thursday and learning the total project’s cost would be $4.6 million – about 18 percent higher than the original estimates.
Superintendent John Menhart said the board must now decide what must be cut from the project to get closer to the $3.9 million that the district earmarked for construction.
“It would strip a lot of things from the project we really wanted,” Menhart said of potential changes. “We’re going to take a few days to do some research. We’re going to have to make some hard decisions, in essence.”
The school board will reconvene at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the high school media room to decide what to do next, Menhart said.
The renovations were to include replacement of the roof and exterior doors, mechanical and electrical upgrades, installation of LED lights and upgrades to restrooms to make then ADA compliant. The project also was to include a new, secure entrance that required visitors to be “buzzed in” through a locked door. There also were plans to replace carpet in the classrooms with tile and provide storage space for students.
Menhart could not speculate on what changes might have to be made.
“They’ve got a lot of information to digest,” Menhart said. “We’ll look at our options and have another meeting.”
The project was originally scheduled to begin last June, but the district pushed it back a year to concentrate on renovating the middle-senior high school. Construction was supposed to begin this month or next, although the overbudget bids put that timeline in jeopardy.
Also Thursday, the school board voted to rescind a bid it accepted from I&Y Construction of Bedford County to replace the football stadium field lights for $245,700. Menhart said there were clerical problems with the bid announcement that the school board felt required the district to re-bid the project.