At a special meeting last week, Fort Bragg Unified School District trustees rejected all bids for the modernization of Fort Bragg High School.
The renovations are primarily paid for by a voter-approved bond that passed two years ago. The engineer”s estimates were in the $13.1 million range with bids coming in about $13.4 million.
Superintendent Don Armstrong explained that the problem wasn”t so much about the bids as uncertainties in state funding.
“It is not so much that the cost came in higher than expected as the available funds from the bond and the state modernization are not enough to do everything that we wanted to do,”
State funds of about $5 million are still hoped for. Armstrong told the board that while bond rates are favorable right now to sell bonds, the rates could change by the time the sales are made.
Armstrong told the board the district would go back and look into how to remove a couple of million dollars from the plans to upgrade the high school and return to the board. Asked for an example at the meeting of what might be removed, he mentioned lighting upgrades as something that might be pulled out without causing problems in other areas.
“The state, as you may expect, is low on cash so the modernization amount is not as high as we were hoping for,” Armstrong said.
Voters approved a $16 million bond two years ago that included plumbing, electric and building upgrades. While some of the money went to completing Dana Gray renovations, the bulk of the money was for the high school, which was built in 1964. The biggest need at the high school is retiring portable, temporary classrooms — that have been used for more than 20 years — whose wooden walls are peeling. Flat, steel roofs of the modulars are losing the battle with the elements.
The measure imposed tax of about $22 per $100,000 in assessed value on all property within the district, which runs from Westport to Caspar. That is combined with the current annual tax from 2003”s Measure D, which can go as high as $50 per $100,000 in assessed value.
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