HVAC project at Burrell High School comes in $1M over budget

Bids for a proposed heating and cooling project at Burrell High School came in about $1 million more than what school district officials were expecting.

Superintendent Shannon Wagner told the school board this week that bids for general construction, HVAC and electrical improvements at the high school came in at about $8 million.

“We were hoping the project would come in around $7,084,000, and it came in at $8 million,” Wagner said.

District officials were hoping for lower bids because, last month, they received the bids for proposed HVAC improvements and a kitchen addition at Bon Air Elementary that came in $3.8 million over what they had planned.

The lowest bid for those projects came in at $12.6 million; the school board asked the district’s architects to attempt to trim that down by revising specifications for the project.

“I’m not happy with the outcome,” board President Rick Kaczor said. “We have to figure out a responsible solution.”

The school board could vote or table those bids at its meeting next week. Bon Air’s bids expire in about 30 days, Wagner said, and the high school’s bids expire in about 60 days.

Kaczor said he has “no idea” how a vote would turn out next week. He encouraged people to attend the meeting to learn more about the proposed projects.

“We’re going to do the most fiscally responsible thing for the community and what’s best for our children,” Kaczor said.

District administrators have said previously the projects they’re proposing, including the HVAC improvements at the high school and Bon Air and the kitchen addition at Bon Air, are necessary. Neither school has air conditioning; the high school’s heating and ventilation systems are from 1964, and Bon Air’s are from 1997.

The proposed projects come on the heels of the district closing Stewart Elementary and a district reconfiguration that makes Bon Air a kindergarten-through-fourth-grade building; Charles A. Huston Middle School a fifth-through-eighth-grade building; and Burrell High School serving students in ninth through 12th grades.

The school board already has taken out a $10 million bond for the proposed projects and has committed to a boiler replacement at the high school for $800,000, which is scheduled to be complete at the end of August.

It’s anticipated the board would take out another $10 million bond to cover the remaining projects.