Green light for new school

PALMER — Cautiously, and with measures in place to watch how the money flows, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly awarded a contract at its Feb. 4 meeting to Collins Construction Inc. to build the district’s largest ever school project and using a new contracting method.

In his regular podcast recorded after the meeting, borough mayor Larry DeVilbiss signaled he might be bringing the legislation back to the table.

“Supposedly, because it’s a new delivery method for the school construction and design, the assembly was all over micromanaging that thing and I’m going to be taking a very close look at that,” the mayor said. “We may be looking at that again.”

The school in question is the planned Joe Redington Sr. Jr./Sr. High School set for construction off of Knikknackmudshack Lane off Knik-Goose Bay Road. It’s planned as a combined junior-senior high school with plans to add an identical building next door that would eventually create separate middle and high schools.

As for price tags, the figure thrown about at Tuesday’s assembly meeting was $45 million, but the contract the assembly awarded was for a portion of that — $13 million for site development and pre-build work. The assembly had tried to approve the contract Jan. 28, but decided to wait on the outcome of a bid protest. The process is different this go-around because the contractor will be responsible for construction and also managing the project; something the borough has generally done in the past.

Assemblyman Jim Colver, with strong support from Assemblyman Ron Arvin, moved to add into the contract some stringent oversight.

His first amendment would require change orders to come back to the assembly. Arvin wanted all change orders to come back. Borough capital projects manager Mike Brown asked for more flexibility than that. He said the contract had been designed with a 10 percent overrun built in. But that was just what borough code allows. Maybe the assembly would settle for lowering that percentage as opposed to eliminating it altogether?

“It does have the potential to slow things down,” Brown said of close assembly oversight.

Arvin said that borough knew how much the project would cost and it shouldn’t be a problem sticking to $13 million.

A compromise of 2.5 percent passed briefly before Arvin swapped that out for a flat dollar amount of $100,000.

The second change took more discussion. Colver’s proposal was to have the borough’s auditor oversee the project, approving subcontracts and other project costs.

The assembly balked at that, essentially arguing that the auditor would then be in charge both of checking the math and handing over the money.

“If the auditor is going to have the authority to sign off on his own work are we going to hire another auditor to audit the auditor?” asked Assemblyman Jim Sykes.

Arvin said he and Covler were just seeking oversight and that oversight is meaningless without authority to approve the expenses.

“We have to have some oversight of the project,” Arvin said. “Otherwise you are not doing what you were elected to do.”

Assemblyman Steve Colligan disagreed, saying that if the auditor finds a problem he should report it to the assembly or the borough manager.

“If there are problems, that’s his job,” Colligan said.

Eventually, the assembly sided with Colligan and Sykes, removing the language about granting approval authority to the auditor.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.