On budget and on time
by Dr. Ken Ladouceur
It has been a while since I have provided the community with a progress report on the project. I apologize but please understand that this was done on purpose as things were changing constantly over the past few weeks. Any information that I could report out to the community would not have been accurate the next day. A lot of good, hard work has been done on your behalf and the project is now ready to go.
Our community passed a $64 million bond in May 2010. Architects and engineers have planned and designed academic classrooms, athletic facilities, elementary parking lots, the middle school roof and the renovation of the high school itself. It was very important to get this phase of the project correct. We have given it all of the time that it needed and it has pushed all of our patience to watch long days of good weather pass without getting a shovel in the ground. I am adamant though that we had to wait. A project as large and complex as this one cannot begin without everyone being comfortable with where we are going and exactly how we are going to get there.
A wrinkle occurred for us a month ago and that confirmed why the planning process is so important. During these tough economic times we are able to get incredible value for the taxpayers’ money that we are spending. To that end we pressure hard to wring the value from every dollar before it is spent. Six weeks ago we believed that we had planned more building than the bond money would allow so we cut $3 million from the project. Bids for the entire project were received on Wednesday September 28 and, unfortunately, we found that we were still $5 million over in spite of all of our work. We went back to the drawing board, pushed even harder, and redesigned portions of the project to bring everything back in line with the budget.
The project will be rebid in smaller packages over the next few months but the Board of Education awarded the contracts for foundations and site work allowing the actual construction phase to get underway. This means that the groundwork for the academic wing, the swimming pool and the gymnasium as well as the football field will get underway immediately. Whether or not the football field is ready for next season will depend entirely on the arrival of next spring.
I hope that this answers a lot of your questions. If not please feel free to contact me at 989-224-4001 or ladouceurk@sjredwings.org with any concerns that you have.