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School board votes to return interest money
By Jim Cornelius

The Sisters School Board will return the bulk of the $1.9 million earned from the $20.5 million high school bond approved by Sisters area voters last year.

The board voted unanimously on Monday, December 10, to return any bond and interest money above the "guaranteed maximum price" of the project, which will soon be nailed down with a Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC).

Current cost estimates stand at $20.88 million (there is an additional $450,000 set aside to remodel the existing high school for middle school use). The board believes that bringing a CM/GC on early will push the price down further through savings in construction techniques and materials.

So if, for example, the guaranteed maximum price comes in at $20.5 million, $1.45 million would be used to pay down the bond, lowering property tax bills.

The decision is contingent upon a construction start date of July 1, 2001.

The district has distributed a Request for Proposal to contractors and held a mandatory pre-proposal meeting on Monday afternoon.

According to district construction projects manager Bob Martin, 12 contractors showed up for the meeting. The deadline for proposals is December 20.

After proposals are submitted, the district will screen applicants and narrow the list of candidates down to approximately three finalists.

The board and other parties in the project will interview the finalists in early January and select the CM/GC.

Under the CM/GC process, the contractor is involved in the design process and sets a guaranteed maximum price instead of a conventional bid.

Board member Steve Keeton noted that the project has drawn some major contractors.

"Out of the 10 biggest contractors in the state of Oregon, I'd say six or seven were here today," he said.

While the school board appears to have worked out the thorny question of what to do with the interest money, they still face a major hurdle in getting the high school property annexed into the city limits of Sisters.

City residents will vote on annexation in March and some are agitating against it.

A number of city residents turned out at Monday's meeting, where Mel Bryan aired their concerns to the board.

Bryan said that tough economic times and slow-growing enrollment should make the board reconsider building a new high school. He argued that the board should consider building a middle school instead, since that's where the crowding is currently.

The board debated building a middle school before going to the voters on the high school bond last spring. They decided that building a high school and remodeling the current high school for middle school use would save taxpayers money in the long run.

Board member Jeff Smith told Bryan that the voters already decided the question by approving the high school bond.

"I don't know how many times we should go back to the voters and say, 'did you really mean it,'" Smith said.

Bryan said that times have changed and voters did not fully understand the impact of the bond.

"If we were to vote on this today... I think you'd lose the vote," he said.

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