Assembly cautious on one school, pleased with another

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly has postponed action on one Knik-area school and received an update on progress on another.

After the bid process on the new Joe Redington Sr. Jr./Sr. High School wrapped up, the winning bidder was Collins Construction.

That bid was to manage the project and do “site development and other advance construction services” on the school and was for $13 million. But it was just the first contract in a project that is expected to run more than $50 million for construction.

In his regular podcast, Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss explained that the school “is supposed to be ready for school next fall. That’s a really tall assignment and it’s a really big school, too. For that reason we’re using a new delivery method starting the contractor before the design is done, getting steel on site, getting prep work done.”

At Tuesday’s assembly meeting, Jim Colver said there was a protest to the bid award.

“I was questioning whether it’s appropriate to make this award with a protest pending,” he said.

Borough manager John Moosey said the approval sought wasn’t to actually award the bid, but just to give borough staff approval to award it. The bid protest process takes 10 days.

“We get approval to award, but pending the outcome of the appeal we will not award,” he said.

But assemblyman Ron Arvin agreed with Colver.

“This is different procedure, one that is untested. It’s a lot of money, upwards of $50 million,” Arvin said. “I think we should let that 10 days go by, find out what is the outcome of that protest process.”

He said he wasn’t advocating delay.

“I’m the guy that’s advocating, as is this whole body, for getting these projects built, getting these dollars out,” he said.

The other school discussed Tuesday was Dena’ina Elementary School, which is planned to be a neighbor to the Redington school, set to open in 2016.

“It’s a two-story school. It’s a very compact design,” Johnathan Steele with design firm Bettiswroth North said.

He said the firm would favor fixtures that are also being used in the Redington school in order to make maintenance of the schools more efficient.

“Looks like you’re teeing up for a design award. That’s a pretty nice looking school,” Colver told him.

He asked how Steele used the Machetanz Elementary School plans as a prototype.

“Our suggestion was we look at this as the basis of design and we look at prototypical parts that form the design of the Machetanz School

But the parts were rearranged to fit the Dena’ina site.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.