Bar Harbor School Project Exceeds $2.475M Contingency Budget
Zboray Seeks Savings After Overages in Conners Emerson Rebuild
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Bar Harbor Music Festival.
BAR HARBOR—The school construction project’s $2.475 million contingency fund has been used and is now over budget, School Superintendent Michael Zboray told the Bar Harbor School Committee, July 17.
The fund is there specifically as padding in the approximately $58-million project that will construct a new school in Bar Harbor and replace the aging and deteriorating Conners Emerson schools. Voters overwhelmingly approved the bond to support that project, June 13, 2023.
The contingency fund has been used approximately 30% of the way toward the project’s completion and there is another $500,000 (approximately) over budget beyond that fund that has been used.
Zboray said he hopes to find ways to whittle that overage down and those possibilities are currently focused on a potential geothermal tax credit that could bring in between $150,000 to $250,000 and working with the contractor Wright-Ryan about finding other opportunities to lower costs.
Two pieces really impacted the budget, Zboray said.
The first was a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) delay for the project, which made the construction start later and required keeping the ground warm during the winter for foundation work required for the concrete, which increased costs.
The second big issue was that the value engineering process underestimated potential costs and overestimated cost-savings for pieces of the project. When those costs came in, they were more than the estimates.
According to Buildr, “Value engineering in construction is a systematic method for analyzing a project’s components, functions, and costs to identify cost-saving or value-enhancing opportunities.”
Steel tariffs also impacted the project despite the best efforts to get most of the steel into the country prior to those tariffs hitting. Zboray hurried to get three shipments of pre-tariff steel in to the site.
Zboray said that the first portion of that tariff hit is approximately $288,000.
“All the structural steel is here, so that’s a good thing,” Zboray said.
However, there is still more steel needed for items such as stairs and railings, according to Zboray.
Other issues were smaller but combined with other costs and mostly work change orders and tweaks that are typical for projects.
“So, that’s kept me up at night,” Zboray said.
They have saved about $100,000 in allowances that Zboray and Harriman Associates (the architect for the project) worked through and found. He will be meeting with Wright Ryan and Harriman to try to find more and also to talk about the overages.
There is still 70% of the project left to do to completion.
School Board Chair Marie Yarborough said that she wanted to make sure that there weren’t costs that the school shouldn’t be paying for, but may be covered in the contract as the builder’s or Harriman’s responsibility. Others agreed.
Zboray met with Bar Harbor Finance Director Sarah Gilbert and Town Manager James Smith on Friday to talk about the finances.
“I will be sharing with them the same spreadsheet I will be doing with the school board at our next meeting,” he said.
That spreadsheet will break out the drivers of these costs and that will be shared with the town council as well.
“I will re-connect with them after the upcoming meetings with both Harriman and Wright-Ryan to explore options for savings. This will help illustrate how the Value Engineering numbers and the DEP Delay consume a significant portion of the contingency,” he said.
I will need to circle back with the board, as my description of the Fire Stop testing costs and window water infiltration testing costs were not accurate.
MOVING THE SCHOOL’S CONTENTS
The board also began talking about the process of moving all the contents from the old school buildings into the new school once they can and how they can minimize disruption to students and teachers during that process, which could take anywhere from two-to-four weeks.
The moving of the interior contents of the school is not in the construction plan and will be an added cost in next year’s budget. The current expectation is for completion to occur between late fall and early winter of 2026.
“They think they are on time,” Zboray said.
Board members stressed that they wanted to make sure that parents and caregivers knew as early as possible about any potential impacts to their children, which could potentially include no school. Similarly, they wanted those impacts to be minimized. They also had a general consensus that they didn’t want school to be remote during that time if possible.
Yarborough said it was important to determine the logistics of the move.
“It has to be someone who is a really dedicated and skilled organizer. That person is going to hold the keys to the efficiency of the move,” she said.
OTHER BUSINESS
The Bar Harbor School Committee unanimously elected Marie Yarborough as chair and Misha Mytar as vice chair.
It also hired two new teachers.
Dr. June Sellers will be the Students with Unique Needs (SUN) and special education teacher.
“I feel lucky that she is joining us,” Zboray said.
Sellers has multiple higher education degrees.
There was only one candidate for the job.
Emilie Ginn was nominated to the sixth grade English Language Arts (ELA) position. She was one of three candidates interviewed and had been an ed tech for a few years in the school.
“She was a (College of the Atlantic) COA student who was here finishing up her master’s program and getting a teaching certificate,” Conners Emerson Principal Dr. Heather Weir Webster said. “I can’t say enough wonderful things about her.”
This is the second person we’ve had from College of the Atlantic who was an ed tech while finishing their schooling and then hired, Zboray said.
“It doesn’t seem like she’s a new teacher. It seems like she’s been in education for a long time. She has that sense about her,” Webster said.
Beth Gilman has moved into the Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) role, which had been filled previously by Jennifer Siriois, Response to Intervention (RTI) reading interventionist for grades 5-8, who now works at the Pemetic Elementary School.
Yarborough also honored Cynthia Brotzman, a long-time teacher who died at the beginning of the month.
“That really hit us as it probably hit most of us,” she said.
She spoke of how past students would walk over to Brotzman’s house and shovel her out, stack wood.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
School’s Building for Our Future site.
Follow us on Facebook. And as a reminder, you can easily view all our past stories and press releases here.
If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here (about how you can give) or here (a direct link), which is the same as the button below.
If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR COMMUNITY
How many students will the new school accommodate? Numbers must be falling due to all the homes becoming Airbnbs.
Please stop using acronyms in your stories, at least use the full title first and then the acronym in parentheses. Many people, myself included, do not know what these mean. i.e. MTSS and RTI. This would be very helpful to most. Thank you, Carrie and Shaun.