Hoover school board OKs Hoover High parking lot expansion, $3.1 million budget amendment
The Hoover school board tonight agreed to pay for a parking lot expansion at Hoover High School.
The school will add 80 to 85 parking spaces on what is now a gravel area next to the new band suite, said Tracy Hobson, the school system’s operations coordinator.
That will allow about 60 students who are now parking down the street at the baseball field to begin parking on the main part of the campus, Principal John Montgomery said. Now, those students are having to walk all the way from the baseball field, Hobson said.
Hoover High School now has roughly 1,300 parking spaces, with almost 1,000 designated for students and more than 300 for faculty and staff, Montgomery said.
Cottingham Contracting Co. was the lowest of four qualified bidders for the contract to build the parking lot expansion and won the contract with a bid of $187,875, including the cost for striping and hauling away existing dirt and gravel, Superintendent Kathy Murphy said.
$3.1 MILLION BUDGET AMENDMENT
In other business tonight, the school board agreed to amend its 2019 budget by adding $3.1 million in expenditures — $3 million of which is related to the cost of renovating the former Riverchase Middle School to convert it into the Riverchase Career Connection Center.
The budget for the renovation project had been set at $11 million when the budget was first approved in September, but when the project was put out for bid shortly thereafter, it ended up costing $13.5 million.
Because architect fees are tied to the cost of renovation, the fee for the Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood architectural firm also increased. Murphy asked the board to approve another $500,000 for additional architect fees.
Interim Chief Financial Officer Michele McCay said most of that increase was related to the increased construction costs. However, when she figured the budget for the project, she also was not aware of a 1.25 percent renovation fee for architects that goes with major renovation projects, she said.
Murphy told the board last week that she felt there were significant delays between January and June of 2018 and that she believed those delays and the need for an expedited construction schedule led to higher costs for the school system.
Tonight, Gary Owen Jr., the regional vice president for Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood in Birmingham, told the school board his firm was indeed working on the project during those months. They were spending time visiting other facilities and meeting with other partners to determine the physical needs for the facility, he said.
A lot of that work happened behind the scenes and just was not as evident to the eye, he said. “It just took a lot of time,” he said. “I can assure you work was being done.”
Also, the company that won the construction contract did not add a premium to its bid due to the tight construction timeline, Owen said.
School board President Craig Kelley tonight asked Owen if Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood would be willing to waive the 1.2 percent renovation fee due to school system concerns. Owen agreed to talk with others in his firm about that. Murphy asked the school board to go ahead and approve the $3.1 million budget amendment and if Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood decides to waive its renovation fee, that would be considered a donation.
The school board tonight also heard a report from Ron Dodson, the director of the Riverchase Career Connection Center. Dodson said renovation work is progressing on schedule to be completed in about 90 days.
He and the staff working to develop the academies for the career center have been busy recruiting students to take part in the programs, he said. They set a goal of having 400 students the first year and so far have 612 signed up, he said.
Those numbers do not include any students who may be coming from the Homewood and Pelham school systems, he said.
This article was updated on March 20 to clarify remarks by Interim Chief Financial Officer Michele McCay regarding architectural fees for major renovation projects.