Business - Daily Business Report
Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009
http://www.kentucky.com/103/story/705625.html
By Jim Warren - jwarren@herald-leader.com
"Fayette County Public Schools are reaping the benefits of Lexington's sliding construction market."
"The city school board awarded contracts for renovations of two Lexington elementary schools Monday night based on bids that came in about $3.6 million below estimates made last fall."
"Fayette board members awarded a contract to Lexington's D.W. Wilburn Inc. for renovation of Cassidy Elementary School for a total cost of just over $11 million. Last October, school officials had estimated the cost would be about $13.8 million."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
There seems to be a consistent theme to the recent blogs that somehow the school board is going off to build the new grade school without considering costs, and not providing for a competitive bidding process.
ReplyDeleteThis is nonsense.
There aren't bids yet because the construction documents are not complete yet. One can not bid what one can not specify. Those documents should be complete sometime this spring.
In the meantime, the board is working with knowledgeable contracting folks to ensure the district is value engineering the building so that when a competitive bidding process is entertained, they have a very good idea what the outcome will be, and there will not be any negative surprises.
This school board has done a masterful job with our annual operating budget and five year plan. Notice how the Foundation target came down this year, even with all the carnage around us? That is no accident.
They did a masterful job in structuring and timing the new bonds so that we got a lower interest rate than had been expected, saving the district (and all of us taxpayers) money in the long run.
So, why would anyone think that they aren't going to be every bit as careful and responsible with the capital expenses for the new grade school?
Trying to project poor financial stewardship on this group of people just doesn't pass the sniff test. They have a track record.