State aid, interest rates to impact capital projects

within the capital planning and districts budgets. Grieco believes the timeline of five years may also be too ambitious to achieve the renovations of bathrooms, some science rooms and other learning environments.

Dr. Rogers agreed that by the board’s Monday, August 28 meeting some of the priority projects that will appear on H2M’s list presenting “prioritization” would not qualify as imminent “health and safety concerns” though they will be related to the quality of the facilities. Others might involve the standards of health and safety building code.

“Things that might initially appear cosmetic might lead to further erosion of our building infrastructure, for example repointing of exterior brick as to avert water infiltration and water forcing bricks off the buildings. We would consider that a cosmetic improvement that has a functional need too. Improving the quality of bathroom fixtures is not as important as making sure our electrical systems do not fail, for example,” Dr. Rogers said.

School Board Trustee Lynn Abramson asked if projects will be proposed and bid involving an “economies of scale.” From H2M Architects + Engineers, Kevin Medler affirmed her thought and provided info to school district trustees; the larger scale projects will provide a better range of total costs in contractors’ bids.

“There are contractors who go out to bid on projects with their prices to have competitive bids, depending on the type of project and scale of how big it is – if you have a bunch of smaller projects contractors may not price out the projects, though you might get some who put in larger numbers. The larger projects carry the larger bids contractors want to secure, and want to bid on. Not only is this a material consideration but it comes down to mobilization, demobilization and cost associated with doing multiple smaller projects as opposed to one big project,” Medler explained.