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The Nugget Newspaper
Sisters, Oregon
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The contents of the on-line edition of The Nugget represent a selection among the stories that appear in the weekly print edition.

School board wrestles with project costs
By Jim Cornelius

Budgets are tight for Sisters High School. Photo by Jim Cornelius

The total estimated cost for the construction of the new Sisters High School stands just shy of $21.6 million.

That's $600,000 over the $21 million budget, but the overage is still covered within the $1.3 million remaining in contingency funds.

Most of the overage comes from "owner's costs," portions of the project such as infrastructure and legal fees that the district is paying for directly rather than through the contractor's bid.

Those costs are $213,131.69 over budget. The school board agreed Monday night, November 4, that an additional $200,000 should be figured in to cover the cost of water rights for irrigation of fields.

Board member Bill Reed, who is working on securing water rights, is optimistic that the district will get rights for considerably less than that, but he agreed that the board should predict the higher cost in its financial analysis.

Much of the overage -- $90,979.26 -- comes from legal and planning fees that exceeded projections. Another $88,725.43 comes from over-budget professional fees.

The school board is also trying to determine just how much it will cost to operate the new high school.

That question carries considerable weight in the face of budget cuts that have forced layoffs this year.

Superintendent Steve Swisher estimated increased operations costs at $91,330 -- a figure board members Eric Dolson and Steve Keeton regarded as too optimistic.

Both board members believe the new school will require more custodial and groundskeeping staff than Swisher included in his estimate.

"It doesn't seem realistic to me that we're doubling the size of the grounds and adding 25,000 square feet and we're adding one (custodial) person," Keeton said.

Swisher acknowledged that custodial staffing estimates were lean, but he believes the school can operate with them.

Dolson also questioned cost figures, citing raw data that estimates $488,659 in costs for the new school.

Swisher noted that there are many cost offsets associated with closing the old, inefficient middle school and ending rent payments for district offices and alternative school sites.

"You can quibble over whether it's $91,000 or $125,000, but it's certainly not $480,000 in my opinion," Swisher said.

After the meeting, Dolson acknowledged that the figures he used were preliminary and could be high.

However, he stood by the assertion that the superintendent's estimate was too optimistic. Specifically, he noted that irrigation water may not be available when the school opens, which would require the district to purchase city water.

The board agreed that realistic estimates must be determined soon so that the district can budget for next year.

"We're going to be in the budget process and I don't know where we're going to get the money," Dolson said. "If we put it off too long we may be looking at cuts that are horrendous that we have to take at the wrong time."

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