Beaufort Co. schools announce Bluffton construction contract, referendum committee
Beaufort County School District made three critical moves to kick off work for their $345 million referendum at a six-hour Tuesday school board meeting, following controversy and debates around the first steps to take after the county’s Nov. 5 vote.
The district can now begin getting voter-approved construction funds with an approved bond attorney, and anticipates beginning construction on the first wave of referendum projects by the end of this week, supervised by a long-promised community oversight committee that was named Tuesday.
Columbia-based firm M.B. Kahn Construction won the contract to build 16 new classrooms at May River and a new 23-classroom wing at River Ridge for no more than $20.9 million, about $5 million lower than the estimated cost that voters saw on their Nov. 5 ballot. The district recommended the firm to the board in August after receiving eight bids on the project.
District spokesman Jim Foster said Wednesday work will begin on both projects by the end of the week. District chief operations officer Robert Oetting said construction will be “substantially completed,” meaning the state will permit students to use the classrooms, at River Ridge by Sept. 1 and at May River by January 1, 2021.
The board approved the contract 7-1-3 leaving executive session. Okatie representative John Dowling saying his abstention was due to “being asked to approve a contract I have not seen.”
Board chairwoman Christina Gwozdz said the contract had been reviewed by Columbia-based lawyer Bick Halligan of the firm Halligan Mahoney & Williams, and that her vote to approve was motivated by a “need to move” on the Bluffton projects.
“This contract has been vetted by an attorney that is well-experienced in this manner, so I will be voting for it,” she said Tuesday in response to Dowling.
River Ridge Academy and May River High School are currently at 105 percent and 97 percent student capacity respectively. Both stand to gain room for 400 students with the additions, bumping May River’s capacity to 1,800 and River Ridge’s to 1,413 — or 1,573 if the district keeps mobile classrooms on campus, which Oetting has previously said will depend on growth.
Referendum oversight
Superintendent Frank Rodriguez also announced the nine members of the district’s promised referendum oversight committee, several of whom are involved in local governments and businesses:
David Ames: Hilton Head Town Council member
Ted Barber: Retired Coca-Cola Co. executive
Derrick Coaxum: Town of Bluffton public works manager
Carlton Dallas: Owner, Dallas International Trading and Solutions LLC
Kim Fleming: Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort External relations director
Ron Groteluschen: Hilton Head Regional Healthcare chief financial officer
Michael McNally: Retired owner of McNally Engineering
Richard Tritschler: Property management team at 303 Associates, LLC
Ray Warco: Retired CPA
The committee will hold its first meeting in January and make quarterly reports to the board about referendum spending.
Bond attorney approved
The board also approved using Burr & Forman for to issue their first wave of referendum funding, expected to total $72 million, with the expectation that they will seek new bids for a bond attorney along with the district by June 30.
The firm offered the district a 15 percent discount on their fees to issue bonds, which would bring the fee cost for the estimated $72 million bond from $71,000 to $69,350.
At their Nov. 19 meeting, members were wary of again hiring Frannie Heizer, a partner at Burr & Forman who has worked with the school district for the past 20 years in previous bond sales and later in bond refinancings. Heizer and her firm are named in a lawsuit stemming from an FBI investigation into embezzlement at the Berkeley County School District in 2017.
Richard Bisi, a co-founder of the advocacy group CARE, called the offered fees a “Black Friday discount” that amounted to “bribery” if not offered to all of the firm’s clients in his Tuesday public comments to the board.
The board approved the six-month hiring of Burr & Forman in a 10-1 vote, with many members citing their reluctance to delay construction projects by seeking another attorney.
“We have a problem,” Burton representative Richard Geier said Tuesday. “And the problem is that we can’t get the bond issued until we have a bond counsel.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2019 at 2:18 PM.