BOARD STUDIES VO-TECH BIDS; NEW SCHOOL EXCEEDS ESTIMATES

Cape Girardeau school officials are weighing options carefully as they attempt to reduce unexpectedly high cost proposals for construction of a vocational school.

School board members are scheduled to award the contract for the Vocational Education Center during a meeting at 6 p.m. Monday in room 214 of the Vocational-Technical School, 301 N. Clark.

The project calls for construction of a vocational school on property west of the intersection of Kingshighway and Southern Expressway. It was expected to cost between $7 million and $8 million, but bids came in nearly 25 percent higher than projected, and board members began working with low-bidder Kiefner Brothers Construction to reduce its $10,991,000 bid.

Other contractors were not contacted about the bid adjustment. The building is slated for completion in September 2000.

"The board is really faced with looking at the plans that went to the contractors and seeing if there are some things that could be left out of the project or delayed in the project so that we could try to get the construction price back to near that $7-to-$8 million," said school board president Dr. Ferrell Ervin.

When the original cost estimate was made three years ago, efforts were made to account for cost increases and inflation, school officials said. However, higher-than-anticipated cost increases and unexpected delays in the project resulted in the higher estimates.

The vo-tech school has met several obstacles since voters approved a $14 million bond issue and 69-cent tax increase in April 1997.

A contract for site preparation came in about $7,000 above the district's estimate of $186,400 in 1998. A federally-protected wetlands was discovered on the site in March 1998 by the Army Corps of Engineers and Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The discovery cost the school district $10,700 in mitigation expenses. Mitigation is a process of offering replacement wetlands.

"Certainly there have been some additional costs we didn't anticipate, but there always are some additional costs," Ervin said. "Every time a project is postponed or is going to be developed in the future, we just have to think the costs are going to be a little higher."

Ervin would not detail specific cost-saving measures being studied by the school board. However, planned construction will be scaled back because the $10 million proposal is too high for the board to consider, he said.

"What could occur, for example, is that we would go ahead and do the outer shell construction of some space and leave it undeveloped on the inside," Ervin said. "It might actually be there are some features that are in the building that are not critical to the instruction, and so it might be that alternatives could come up to those."