Peters Township board awards $83 million in contracts for new high school
Peters Township School Board voted during a special meeting June 11 to award nine contracts, totaling $83.175 million, for construction of its new high school.
The action came on the heels of the board’s May 29 approval of the acceptance of lowest responsible bidders and to include several items labeled as “deduct alternates” in the project, including a natatorium to house a competitive swimming pool.
That measure’s vote was 6-3, with Rebecca Bowman, Jamison Hardy and William Merrell opposing.
“I believe the pool is the responsibility of the community, not the school district,” Bowman said at the time.
She did vote in favor of awarding the contracts, while Hardy and Merrell again dissented.
“We promised the community we would not raise their taxes more than 1.5 mills over the next six years, and that’s a promise I took very seriously,” Merrell said.
A plan presented by Hardy, chairman of the board’s finance committee, on May 29 showed that to borrow the extra $5 million to cover the anticipated cost of a natatorium, “that would raise our millage impact from 1.50 to 1.57.”
“We can do anything we want with the money,” Hardy said during the presentation. “We can borrow as much money as the law will allow us to borrow. Does that mean it’s the right thing to do? And the answer’s no.
“We’re not the federal government,” he contended. “We can’t just continue to print money in order to meet our financial obligations.”
Along with construction costs, the $12 million-plus in “soft costs” associated with the high school project – including architectural, engineering, financing and legal fees – bring the total to $95.950 million, according to figures provided by district business manager Brad Rau.
The school board originally set the budget at $90 million to build a new school on the former Rolling Hills Country Club property, which is scheduled to open in time for the start of the 2020-21 academic year.
Swimming enthusiasts filled the audience of several school board meetings to advocate for the inclusion of a natatorium with initial construction. Merrell, though, has contended that a pool meets the needs of only a small segment of the student population.
“We don’t use it for an educational reason,” he explained, saying that he plans to call for the resources for gym classes to take place in the natatorium. He also lambasted board members who voted in favor of it.
“I don’t think the entire community should be tasked with the responsibility of paying for their whim,” he said. “You need to have some semblance of responsibility to the entire community, not just certain groups.
Obtaining the money for the pool is not going to happen immediately, Rau said.
“We wouldn’t need to borrow it until the tail end of the project,” he explained on May 29. “At that point, we might have other things that we have to do, so it would be in the best interests financially for us to wait and see what that would actually be.”
According to information presented at that meeting, plans call for the financing to occur over 22 years, with $4.854 million due to wrap up payments in 2042.
Even without the pool, some aspects of the new high school are more expensive than anticipated, including higher bids on contracts and a larger district contribution for a new road to be built through the Rolling Hills property.
Hardy also spoke about the possible effects of the financing on future district budgets.
“We will not have any frivolous spending, whatsoever,” Hardy said. “There will not be options for us to potentially do things that we might have wanted to do that were ‘luxurious’ rather than necessity.”