Legislators weigh cost of school construction projects

Legislators weigh cost of school construction projects
 
By Kathryn Palmer
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
CHEYENNE – As the Wyoming Legislature prepares to address a projected $1.5 billion revenue shortfall over the next two years, lawmakers are re-examining how state dollars are spent across all sectors of government.
One of those areas is school construction.
While many states rely heavily on local taxes to fund individual school districts, the majority of district funding in Wyoming comes from the state’s shrinking mineral revenue streams. Wednesday morning, the Select Committee on School Facilities held a virtual meeting to discuss how the state could increase its efficiencies when it comes to funding the construction and maintenance of school buildings.
In September, the committee asked the State Construction Department to produce a report that shows how much of the project contingency fund is spent on change orders, or changes to construction plans after the bid for a new school has already been awarded.
The report presented to the committee Wednesday showed that between 2014 and 2020, various school districts used more than $21.5 million – or 3.22% – of the state’s contingency fund to cover additional costs of school building and renovation projects.
The state has a 5% contingency fund for new projects and 10% for renovations.
“How do we fix that? If we wanted to narrow that gap and reduce the amount of change orders?” said Rep. Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale. “How do we have standardized construction plans? How do we get away from (change orders)? Is it our job as the Legislature to tweak something, or is the (Department of Education) and the (Wyoming School Facilities Commission) capable of clamping down on this?”
Paul Syverson, design and construction administrator for the State Construction Department, said change orders are sometimes an unavoidable part of the construction process, but it would be easiest to control change order issues related to the change of scope of a project.
“In relative terms, the ability for the department to have specific controls is limited by statute. Many of the decisions associated with projects are assigned to the districts,” Syverson said. “In many cases, the ability to have control of those decisions does not rest with the department.”
Sen. Eli Bebout, R-Riverton, suggested that if the state came up with “a basic” building plan, that could help “control the costs of some of the change orders.”
Using prototypes can lead to cost savings, said George Galida, program development administrator for the School Facilities Division of the State Construction Department.
“But in Wyoming, we have to remember that the size of our elementary schools varies a lot,” Galida said. “To develop a prototype to fit each of those situations probably wouldn’t be very cost-effective.”
“The commission has landed on a mechanism to be able to use plans over and over again, if the school district decides those plans fit their needs. That’s a pretty good compromise between having a hard prototypical approach and not having anything at all.”
Sommers said he sees three ways to address the shortfalls in school construction funding.
“Either we tighten our process and become more efficient in what we build, we don’t build at all or we have to increase that tax to pay for what we want,” he said. “If we just keep patting ourselves on the back, we’re going to go down to the same line of not having enough money to build projects.”