By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Several Hays USD 489 school board members expressed frustration at a special meeting on Monday after being presented with an almost $1 million change order for O'Loughlin Elementary School.
The $987,650 change order includes the replacement of sewer lines throughout the building.
The funds for the repairs would come from bond funds. It would increase the overall cost of the O'Loughlin renovation project to $16.8 million. The overall bond initiative remains within budget, but unallocated bond funds would be reduced to about $1 million, Wilson said.
The largest project in the bond initiative, Hays High School, is nearing completion and is set to open in August. The second-largest project is the Roosevelt Elementary School renovation and addition, which is complete.
Work has yet to be completed at the existing high school and middle schools, but those projects have much smaller scopes than Roosevelt, Hays High and O'Loughlin, with a total budget for both schools of about $10 million.
Dylan Weddle, Nabholz Construction project manager, said a camera survey of the pipes found sewage leaking underneath O'Loughlin Elementary School.
Weddle said during the camera scopes, in several places, workers observed that there were no longer bottoms to the pipes. In other locations, the existing cast iron pipes showed signs of erosion.
O'Loughlin Elementary School was built in the 1960s by the Catholic Diocese and used initially as a girls' high school. It was purchased by Hays USD 489 and converted into an elementary school in 1989.
Renovations to the school have been ongoing this summer, and some floors will have to be dug up to install the new sewage pipes next summer.
Weddle said the sewer issue was discovered in April, and Nabholz has been working with DLR, the district's architect, and Glassman, a local contractor, to develop a plan and estimate the cost of fixing the issue.
Board President Curt Vajnar asked why, if Nabholz had been aware of the sewer issue in April, it had not been brought to the board's attention until now.
"Surely we could have had a heads-up," he said.
He also cited a 2021 building report card, which was released before the bond issue was passed, showing that O'Loughlin had sewer issues.
Vajnar said someone had alerted him to the sewer issue in April. However, he said he had promised that person he would not release his or her name and would not disclose the information publicly or to the other board members.
Weddle said Nabholz had not attempted to hide the problem. The firm was asked to look into the potential issue and provide a price for resolving it.
Vajnar expressed concern that work to renovate rooms in O'Loughlin has been completed this summer, and the floors will have to be dug up next summer to repair the sewer lines.
Weddle said that will have to happen. He said he did not know the exact number of affected rooms. He said the district could explore temporary flooring in the affected rooms, as the floors in the renovated areas have not been finished yet this summer.
The project called for paint and new floor coverings to be added to half of the existing rooms this summer. The work on the rest of the school was set to be completed next summer.
Board member Allen Park called the change order a "large mistake."
"I wouldn't call it a mistake," Weddle said. "It wasn't part of the scope. The cost isn't any more than it would be if it had been added to the project before. I can only go from when we were asked to look at it, and we were asked to look at it in the spring."
Weddle said it would not be standard procedure for an architectural firm such as DLR to scope existing sanitary sewer piping as part of their design.
Board member Ruth Ruder asked Weddle if the school district would be in violation of any health regulations if it did not fix the sewer.
Weddle said he was not aware of the pipes backing up at this point, but the district maintenance department has been cleaning out pipes multiple times per year.
Board member Derek Yarmer also asked why the board was not informed sooner about the need for the sewer repairs.
Yarmer also wanted to know why the project was not bid.
Weddle said, "In a case like this, it is more efficient and extremely helpful to have a contractor on board who can work with you and the engineer rather than having all of those discussions in a vacuum without a contracot's help, especially when the contractor does all of the plumping and mechanical work in that building and has an intimate knowledge of all of the plumbing and fixtures in there."
"I think that got us there quicker, more efficiently and probably at a lower cost design-wise because they helped figure out what that design needed to be," he said.
A Glassman representative said they were able to utilize bulk pricing to order the fixtures for the sewer project because they had already ordered other fixtures in bulk for the project.
Yarmer said, "[The sewer project] should not be a shock to anyone. The fact that it is a shock to you is concerning."
He asked what would be done to prevent a significant change order from being brought to the board again as the district proceeds with renovations of the former high school and middle school.
"It is a mistake," Yarmer said, "and I think Allen [Park] was completely correct that you screwed up on this. You, being the whole group, you Nabholz, DLR, or whoever. This should have been known before passing bond money for it."
He added, "I don't think the discussion is that we're not going to do this because it has to be done. The question is why was it not found earlier, because it should have been found earlier. Two, we should have put more stock into the important things in the school and not the paint and carpet."
Weddle said Nabholz is not under contract for any plumbing work on the former high school. He said the current middle school plumbing could be scoped now, and DLR could include any necessary repairs in the design work.
Board vice president Ken Brooks said, "There was a problem somewhere along the way, obviously. I won't disagree with that. But it's got to be taken care of."
The school board also approved change orders for Hays High School for $163,126.
The change orders included several safety items, including equipment for the elevators, blinds and shades, and a radio frequency booster. DLR had also only included two basketball goals for the auxiliary gym. Four additional goals accounted for $52,799 of the total.