The District 86 Board of Education approved the summer construction bids recommended by its general contractor last week despite two board members being unhappy with two one-bid packages and a request from a future board member to postpone the vote until the new board is seated.
Board members voted 5-2 on April 22 to approve the selected subcontractors, who are expected to carry out about $1.1 million in construction work the board budgeted for this summer, including main hall renovations at both Hinsdale Central and Hinsdale South, a new girls locker room at South, and new exhaust fans at Central.
Dianne Barrett and Richard Skoda casted the “no” votes. Both dissenters said receiving only one bid on two of the eight packages—electrical work and miscellaneous metals work—was troubling.
“We should not expect to have less than probably four bidders per tradesperson, and two of them we have one. Another one, for general trades, we only had two,” Barrett said. “I don’t think that’s acceptable.”
In fact, according to agenda documents from the meeting, there were two packages that received two bids: general trades work, as Barrett noted, and ceilings and drywall work.
Skoda said he didn't think "anybody distrusted anybody" in District 86. But the board member did say bid packages can be written to be inclusive or exclusive.
“The process has been flawed and it continues to be flawed, as evidenced by the one-bid [packages],” he said.
The district's painting work and plumbing work each received four bids, while flooring work and HVAC work each received three.
See all the packages and the subcontractors that bid on them here on the district's website.
District manager Doug Lim of Gilbane Inc., District 86’s general contracting firm, said the low number of bidders on some packages is due to the fact that the construction market is heating up for the first time since the recession, and a lot of subcontractors don’t need or want to take summer school-improvement projects.
“When these guys have much larger projects with much longer time durations … they’re going to go after those kind of projects [instead of] the type of project we have this summer,” Lim said. “For them it is a small bid.”
Lim said his firm has a database of all subcontractors in the Chicagoland area and works hard to publicize the bid packages in newspapers and reach out directly to subcontractors to sell them on bidding.
“We cannot make them bid on it,” Lim said. “The only thing we can do is tell them what the bids are. It’s up to them to bid on these things.”
Board President Dennis Brennan agreed with Barrett and Skoda that it would be good to have numerous bidders on every project.
“But ultimately you want a bid within the budget and you want the work done so it doesn’t disrupt school,” Brennan said.
Board members Brennan, Kay Gallo, DeeDee Gorgol, Michael Kuhn and Jennifer Planson all voted to approve hiring the recommended subcontractors after voting down a motion by Skoda that would have deferred the vote until the new board, which will not include Brennan or Gorgol, is seated on May 6.
Barrett and Skoda were the only board members who voted to defer.
Ed Corcoran, who will be among the members of the new board, requested during public comment that the board defer. He said there were contentious issues related to the "scope process and bidding process" of the 2013 summer projects.
"We would like to have a look at that with the new board," he said.
Corcoran was a member of the "Friends for District 86" candidate slate that placed three new board members in April's election running on a platform that criticized the current board for, among other things, approving what the slate called "no-bid contracts."
Lim advised against delaying the vote until May 6 in the interest of ensuring the the work starts on time and finishes within budget.
The $1.1 million budgeted is for construction costs only, Superintendent Nick Wahl said. The board approved last winter a $1.7 million maximum budget for 2013 summer projects as a whole, including all construction and consulting costs.
- - - - - - - - - -
There are plenty of ways to keep up with the news:
- Sign up for our daily newsletter: Hinsdale-Clarendon Hills / Burr Ridge / Darien
- Follow us on Facebook: Hinsdale-Clarendon Hills / Burr Ridge / Darien