Groups to seek cash for schools

New schools planned for the area are already over budget, but local officials still are discussing potential solutions.

A Monday night joint meeting of the Orange County Board of Commissioners and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City and Orange County Schools boards of education addressed funding difficulties the school districts are facing in building their new schools.

"We agreed to talk in more detail about our options to deal with the budget shortfall," said Barry Jacobs, chairman of the commissioners.

The city school district plans to build a third high school and the county school district a third middle school, but both projects have proven more expensive than originally envisioned.

"Obviously, no solutions were presented, but there was a spirit of good will," said Neil Pedersen, superintendent of the city schools.

The city board has proposed two packages of cost-cutting measures, estimated at approximately $3.4 million and $1.9 million over budget. It strongly prefers the more expensive option. County construction costs are expected to be $2.7 million beyond allocated funds.

"The construction cost increases I don't think anybody envisioned two years ago, and they're real and they're here and here now, and we need to do something about it," said commissioner Stephen Halkiotis.

County officials said the county does not have the funds on hand to cover the overruns. Halkiotis suggested that a team be formed to coordinate debt so that the money would be available when it was needed.

County schools primarily blamed the cost increase on the rising prices of construction materials.

"Suffice it to say, we're caught between a rock and a hard place, and we need to get out of it," said Libbie Hough, chairwoman of the county school board.

Start-up costs for the middle school are an issue for the county district in its budget and planning for the new school.

There were concerns about who would hook up the water grid to the school.

Several ideas for cutting costs on the project were discussed. One of the ideas was collaborating with a local soccer organization on certain features that both facilities could possibly share, including a parking lot, access road and utilities.

The largest item discussed was cutting the planned series of features that would integrate daylight into the new school.

Hough mentioned that the features would cost $1.8 million and would likely be high on the list of things to be sacrificed.

"This could be one of the first things to go potentially, which would be a sad state of affairs," she said.

The city board also attributed the higher cost of its project to increasing cost of construction materials. It cited increasing square footage as reason for overruns as well.

Of its two options for cutting costs, the city board strongly preferred the first plan. Option one involves small reductions in construction materials; option two postpones the construction of an auditorium to a later construction phase and reduces construction materials even further.

Although no decisions were made regarding budgeting for the schools, Pedersen said it is a pressing issue.

"The students are basically already here, and time is of the essence."

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