The Lincoln County Board of Education considered the acceptance of the guaranteed maximum price for the Highland Rim renovation at its May 4 monthly meeting. The agenda item was twofold. In addition to approving the multi-million dollar guaranteed maximum price, the board also approved an additional cost for technology for the school addition.

“What we just did was approve to accept the guaranteed maximum price. Now, we’re literally voting to move the money,” said Schools Director Jacob Sorrells, following the vote.

Ricky Bryant, Lincoln County Schools supervisor of facilities and maintenance, said the guaranteed maximum price is $11,855,097. “In that guaranteed maximum price, we have $300,000 of contingency. We have a testing allowance of $25,000 and a fire marshal allowance for anything that might come up with them for $125,000,” he said. “Just to give you a little more information, our 177 Fund (Budget) has pretty much $9,678,623 in it. You’re going to see in just a few minutes we’re going to need to pull in about $2 million to $2.2 million from the fund balance to reach our goal. That’ll give us $11.878 million, which will reach our guaranteed maximum price.

“What we do have is another approximately $500,000 that we’re going to need to take care of all our technology. … We get that through eRate at 70% to 80% savings, pretty much,” Bryant said. “We can get that for pennies on the dollar compared to what we can pay somebody else to do that for us.” eRate is a federal program which helps with technology costs at a rate of approximately 80% savings, according to school officials.

“What you’re looking at with that $500,000, you’re looking at a project that’s going to be right around $12,378,623,” Bryant said.

“And just remember that’s no new space, no new entrance,” said Sorrells. “A lot of people may, from the outside, think nothing really has changed much.”

“We ran into an issue that was almost insurmountable in that if we added that front — and I really wanted to build that front out, I promise you I did, but the fire marshal’s office was simply going to make us sprinkle the entire building,” Bryant said. “Not only the part we were working in, but a couple of the parts we are not going to renovate that are not sprinkled now. It was just going to make it unreachable. We backed up and said, ‘Hey, we’ll have to go with the plan,’ which was to have that smaller office.”

Bryant said it will look much the same from the outside. “Hopefully, we can get a canopy out there and a little concrete work out front,” he said. “So if you get any calls that it doesn’t look like anything’s going on, we’re doing a lot on the inside.”

“The $2.2 million is just to get what we have in Fund 177 to the guaranteed maximum price,” Sorrells said. “We have to add to that $500,000 just so Mr. (Brad) Luna — we’re doing all this work inhouse — is going to do it, which is great. It saves us some money, but we still have to pay for it. We’re not subbing this out to Lashlee-Rich (construction management company), but we still have to pay for that as well as on top of what we’re paying Lashlee-Rich.” The school board does multiple requests for information (RFI) with Lashlee- Rich for the projects involved in this renovation. The company is directly involved in making sure the projects are progressing as they should.

School Board member Judy Ashby asked Bryant, “Could you remind me what we paid to build the new school?” He said the bid was about $27 million. “The guaranteed maximum price was about $27 million,” he said. “I don’t have that in front of me, but that’s really, really close, I want to say it was $26.9 million.”

“The price will not go down,” Sorrells said, to which Bryant said, “It does not.”

“Instead of walking this through with the budget, we’re asking to take this out of the fund balance — like now,” Sorrells said. “Because we really want to take this out of the fund balance now, get it to the county commission so it can get final approval June 26 (when the county commission next meets). Then we can get Lashlee-Rich to start working. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves to start work and turn people loose when we literally don’t have all the total funds available to start the project. We feel like we need to pull the money out and get the county commission’s approval to do that.

“We kind of slowed down a little bit just for that reason,” Sorrells said. “That makes sense.”

“It’s very transparent in what we’re doing,” Bryant said. “Very,” said Sorrels. “They’ll get it tomorrow afternoon if you approve it (tonight).”

Board Member Jeremy Ezell made the motion to accept the guaranteed maximum price for the Highland Rim renovation. Board Member Martha Tallman second the motion, which was approved by roll call vote resulting in seven yes votes. Board Member Rex Dunn was absent.

Sorrells said, “What we just did was approve to accept the guaranteed maximum price. Now, we’re literally voting to move the money.”

Board Member Steve Miller made the motion to approve the budget amendment moving needed funds from the fund balance for the renovation and textbooks. Ezell seconded the motion, which was approved with seven board members present voting yes.