High cost of building schools challenged

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005 | 11:04 a.m.

Clark County School Board President Larry Mason wondered Wednesday if sharp increases in school construction costs had more to do with greedy contractors than supply and demand.

School District staff warned School Board members at a facilities work session that two new projects, a human resources intake center and a special education campus, both came in with low bids that were more than 45 percent over the projected budget. And estimates for the coming months are equally grim as the cost of construction materials continues to rise, said Paul Gerner, associate superintendent of facilities for the district.

Gerner and others told the School Board they believed the rising costs were caused by the "bidder's climate" that has evolved in Southern Nevada, where the demand for qualified contractors and laborers far outpaces the supply. But Mason pointed out that the district has several billion dollars in proceeds from bond sales and tax revenue earmarked for school construction.

"They know we have it, they know they have us by the proverbial area," Mason said at a School Board work session, drawing chuckles from the audience. "Sometimes I think people are saying, 'Let's jack it up.' "

She also questioned why contractors weren't more willing to give the district a better deal, given that after the economic downturn following Sept. 11 the district was one of the few organizations that continued to need construction labor.

"Why didn't that engender any loyalty?" Moulton asked.

Fred Smith, construction manager for the district, said his office is looking at a variety of ways to attract more contractors to the bidding process, including extending the construction period for an elementary school to 330 days from 300 days. But that doesn't change the fact that building for the district means wading through the red tape that accompanies public-works projects, Smith said.

"They (contractors) have their pick of the work -- to a lot of them it's just not worth the headaches," Smith said.

The pool of available labor is only going to dwindle further as various high-rise construction projects throughout the Las Vegas Valley get going, Justin Peterson, regional manager of O'Conner Construction Management, told the School Board.

With a looming shortage of classroom seats, the district doesn't have much time to dicker, said Dusty Dickens, director of zoning and demographics. The district could be short one elementary school as early as 2008, even if all of the existing campuses and those still remaining to be built were operating on a year-round schedule, Dickens said.

Those estimates don't even take into account the district's hopes to make full-day kindergarten available to all students, which would further diminish classroom capacity, Dickens said. School Board members have also expressed an interest in eliminating "team teaching," where two teachers share an oversized classroom, and reducing class sizes across the board.

The School Board voted 5-0 Wednesday to approve spending $13 million to build the Miley Achievement Center, which would be the district's first campus dedicated solely to students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. The price tag for the center, to be built near the intersection of Stewart Avenue and Pecos Road in eastern Las Vegas, is 47 percent more than the $8.9 million estimated by district staff.

Moulton said she had "grave concerns" about approving the project and worried that it would come back to haunt the board in a few years when they went back to voters to raise an additional $3.5 billion for new school construction.

She approved the project after the School Board heard from Karyn Durbin, the principal of Miley, which is currently located on the campus of Cannon Junior High School. Durbin said students and staff are at risk of physical harm because of the lack of specialized facilities. There have been several incidents in the past in which teachers were injured attempting to calm down students, Durbin said.

Voters in 1998 approved freezing the district's share of property taxes at 55 cents for every $100 of assessed value. The district raises about $200 million each year through bond sales, using a combination of real estate tax, hotel room tax and sales tax revenue to pay back the debt. Several School Board members questioned Wednesday if the district should wait until 2008 to go back to voters and ask to continue the property tax freeze and bond sales for another 10 years, as has been tentatively planned.

"No one wants to go back to the nightmare of double sessions," said School Board member Susan Brager-Wellman.

Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of operations for the district, said while it might be logistically possible to get the bond measure question on the 2006 ballot, it would be a "tough sell" to the voters.

"In 2006 we'll still have money left," Rulffes said. "I don't know how in the world we could tell taxpayers we have $2 billion left and we want $3.5 billion more."

A better course of action, Rulffes said, would be for the School Board to consider a moratorium on additional plans for renovations and replacements of aging campuses, beyond the $840 million in work already scheduled as promised in the 1998 building program. That would allow the district to conserve enough cash to build the elementary schools needed for the "gap" year when the existing bond measure expires.