Community Update

Some folks have proposed waiting another year, saying we’ve gotten it horribly wrong, but that we’ll get it right next time.  I need to respond to that:

1. the current plan calls for continuing community input to be coupled with professional expertise before we set off on the wrong track.  Architects and the owner’s representative (who will be selected by the BOE and tasked with bird-dogging this project to look out for our interests) will be required to commit to an extraordinarily open  design process, probably incorporating an iterative series of design charettes, to solicit and incorporate public participation and expertise in the design process.  The architects (still to be selected) will also be expected to perform engineering and efficiency analyses to assist in making renovate/replace determinations as to specific spaces and substructures within the affected buildings.  The BOE will oversee the design development and will, of course, retain an ultimate veto power over every aspect of the project as it develops. I see no possible advantage to postponing these design programming activities until yet another year has passed.  Why?  Because the community has been and will continue to be intimately involved in these design programming activities.

2. waiting another year will likely cause serious financial repercussions.  This needs some careful explication, so bear with me.  

• interest rates are just beginning to rise right now.  A year’s delay will result in a much higher interest rate, raising the total project cost considerably.  A rise from, say, 5% to 6% interest raises the total debt service costs by more than 20%.

• Waiting another year will subject any new plan to a greatly reduced debt ceiling, and will thereby require in an increased number of “phases.”   This will push completion of the project even further down the road, regardless of the order in which the project elements are completed.  While the passage of a first bond levy for a “special needs district” locks in an exception to the total debt ceiling the district can eventually undertake, there is a maximum amount available for the first phase.  That maximum is based on a floating average of the total assessed property values in the district over a period over several years.  The housing market crash of 2008 already limits our debt capacity vs last year.  Our Phase 1 debt ceiling for 2014 will be considerably lower.  This reduction would allow us to do just the high school at most if the bond levy had to wait til next year.

I also need to talk a little bit more about the LFC Plan.  Many folks are unhappy not to have some drawings or models to look at as they consider their position on Issue 81.  Believe me, I’d like some too.  It would make my life a lot easier if I could just point to a drawing or a model and say “It’s going to look like this.”  But I can’t.  It may turn out to be a good thing, or it may turn out to be a bad thing.  While it’s much easier to think about with a set of drawings or models, the actual plan ---in the sense of architectural drawings--- has not yet been drawn.  Here’s why, and I apologize, once again, for the nuanced exposition that I feel is required:

Once a drawing is made, the train leaves the station.  Any deviation from the tracks in front of it constitutes a disaster of one form or magnitude or another. It’s really, really hard to move train tracks once they’re laid.  It’s even harder when there’s a train sitting on top of those tracks.  Let me offer a concrete example.  Our Career Technical Education program offers an Automotive Technology course.   This requires specialized facilities from tool and equipment storage to lifts, from lathes to cutting torches, from scanners to oscilloscopes.  The roof must be high enough, the doors large enough, the ventilation good enough that cars can actually be inspected, diagnosed, maintained, and repaired.  Our current Automotive Tech spaces do not meet existing State standards.  A careful engineering analysis will be required to determine what portion(s) of the existing facilities must be replaced and what portions can be efficiently renovated.  At the same time, similar analyses must be made for all of the other technical education spaces.  Then we have to figure out how to integrate all of these spaces to work and physically fit  with one another.  So, while we know the total number of square feet required for each program space, we don’t yet know, in a detailed drawing kind of way, exactly where each one will be or how best to package them together.  So there is a plan ---to provide certain programs---- but there are no drawings yet, because finding out the answers to these very specific questions requires a budget.  And until the bond issue passes, we don’t have a budget.  Nor do we have sufficient in-house expertise to develop the analyses on which the best answers depend.

So, you can look at the situation and say, “There’s no plan, and the cup is half empty.”  Or you can look and say, “There’s a plan,  but there are no drawings yet, and the cup is half full.”    Or you can look and say, as I do, “There’s a plan for a plan, and it’s pretty clear this cup is twice as big as it needs to be.  I’m mighty glad we haven’t ordered our cup supply yet. Let’s find out what kind of cups we need, and how big, and how many, and then order our cups.”  That’s what Issue 81 will allow us to do.  With your help, your wisdom, your input and expertise, we can get it right, right now.

I’m also getting a lot of questions about the pricetag for specific items to be included in the renovation.  The first thing to know about this question is that this is not like ordering off a menu, with separate pricing for each individual appetizer, entree, side dish, and dessert. It’s a bit more like ordering a “dinner for six”  with one from Column A, two from Column B, and three from Column C.  This is a prix fixe meal: Issue 81 raises a certain amount of money ($134.8 million.)  The second thing to know is that while there are some estimates for certain items, that’s all they are: estimates.  Additionally, breaking out costs for individual pieces of a very complex project is maddeningly difficult.  Here’s an example from my own home.  A pipe burst in an upstairs wall, flooding our house while we were out.  There was a lot of damage on the first floor.  While the ceiling was down, ---yeah, a lot of damage!--- we replaced the original knob and tube wiring to the light fixture.  And while the walls were down, we updated the baseboard wiring as well.  So, what was the cost of the electrical updates?  Nearly zero, (Okay, materials, less than $100; additional labor, about two hours) compared to what we would have had to spend to do them by themselves.  In the high school project we’ll be running all new mechanical and electrical systems.  It’s a lot of work. But you can run in all the new stuff, and insulate the walls as well, all at once for far less than it would cost to run new wiring this year, then new plumbing next year, then new heating the year after.  So, how much does the wiring cost?  In a large project, you can only really answer incremental costs for the materials and the labor, although there are separate figures called out for a lot of categories such as electrical, plumbing, etc.

That said, there are a few items that probably can be teased out.  The swimming pool, the football field.  (The proposed pool, a high school competition pool, approximately half the size of an Olympic pool, would be available for community use.  Unlike the current pool, it would be fully ADA compliant/accessible and would feature clean changing rooms and shower areas.  Also unlike the current pool, the acoustics would allow conversation. It would feature a separate entrance and could be sealed off from the rest of the building to allow after-hour and weekend use. Estimated cost is $7.8 million. The LFC report strongly recommended that the school district seek to partner with the cities of Cleveland Heights and University Heights to jointly fund construction of the pool.  As far as I know, neither city has yet responded to that invitation, if indeed one was ever formally issued.  I would not hold my breath!  The estimated cost of renovating the current pool, without solving the accessibility issues, without opening it for wider community use, without controlling the acoustics, is just over $5 million. This is not an area of detail on which I can claim any expertise or special knowledge.)  I don’t recall the numbers for the football field, but the plan calls for funding only safety and security upgrades, with all additional funding to be raised via private donations.  

These cost estimate numbers, such as they are, were generated under a contract with the school board by Regency Construction, which has a fair amount of experience with these types of projects.  How accurate they are, I have no way of knowing, but I strongly suspect that they give us an outline of the general order of magnitude of each segment.