Town officials were chagrined Wednesday night to learn that preliminary cost estimates for the Lincoln School project are substantially higher than the $93.9 million budget approved by residents at a Special Town Meeting in June.
At its meeting Wednesday evening, the School Building Committee (SBC) and others heard the two independent estimates for the project—one at $102 million and one at $109 million—in shocked silence. Those numbers are 8.6 percent and 16 percent higher than the original figure, respectively.
On Friday, architects and representatives from Daedalus, the owner’s project manager representing the town, will have an all-day meeting to go over the cost estimating figures in detail and try to reconcile the two estimates by making sure they used the same set of assumptions as to scope, quantities and costs of materials, etc.
“We need to understand why” both figures are significantly higher than the earlier estimate, said Delwyn Williamson, director of cost estimating at Daedalus.
The gross square footage of the project has changed slightly in design tweaks since June, but square footage “is not really making a difference at this point,” Williamson said. One of the contributing factors for the increase may be in the cost of modular classrooms, because early proposals incorrectly assumed that the Hartwell pods could be used for some of the swing space during the two phases of construction, she said. The cost of reusing the modular classrooms from the recent Hanscom projects is also higher than anticipated, but it’s still unclear exactly how much these issues affected the estimates.
Between this Friday and the next SBC meeting on October 3, SMMA will come up with a list of “value engineering” items for the SBC to look at as they consider what aspects of the project to change or remove in order to meet the mandated budget.
“We have a very high level of sensitivity to the community’s need to have that price as low as possible while still preserving the program,” said SBC member Kim Bodnar.
On a hopeful note, Buck Creel, the Lincoln Public Schools administrator for business and finance, noted that the initial estimate for the 2012 project came in at more than $60 million, but the SBC was able to get that amount down to $49 million (although the project eventually failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority at Town Meeting). Part of that reduction came about when the SBC elected not to relocate preK from the Hartwell building to the main school—a move that is also in the current plan, at least for now.
More meetings coming up
The SBC is scheduled to approve a final cost figure on October 17. The group may add another meeting on October 10. There will be a multiboard meeting on October 18 (two days before the annual State of the Town meeting) to gather questions from other town boards, and a second multiboard meeting/community forum on November 15.
A two-thirds majority is required at a Special Town Meeting on December 1 to approve bonding for the project. There will also be a December 3 town-wide ballot that must win a simple majority for the project to advance.
The $93.9 million Option L3 was the mid-priced choice among the three options presented to voters in June. In the final vote, 74 percent of residents voted to move ahead with Option L3, compared to 17 percent for Option C ($94.3 million) and 9 percent for Option L2 ($83 million).
At the June meeting (see handout posted on the School Building Project website — lincolnsbc.org), 5 (not 3) options were presented — R (49M), L1 (73M), L2 (84M), L3 (93.9M), C (97.8M). R and L1 were described as “does not meet Lincoln’s 2030 energy bylaw.” However, I’m not sure these should be simply ignored, especially given the above overruns. The projected 20% increase in real estate taxes required by L3 will be a significant burden for many residents. Presenting L3 as “mid-priced” is perhaps favoring it too much. It could also be described as the second most expensive option of 5 presented and the most expensive of the “L” options. I heard a number of people at the June meeting say the equivalent of “money is no object” but I’m not sure that’s a good approach if it causes problems for many people.