The first of the projects from Measure E money, the $120 million general obligation bond passed by voters in the Sonoma Valley Unified School District in November, most likely won’t start until sometime in 2018.
That’s because there’s plenty of preparation that needs to be done first.
At the Jan. 17 school board meeting, Ternaya Dale, from Crosspoint Construction, the district’s construction management firm, went over the next steps now that the bond issue has passed.
“There’s a whole lot of work to do,” she told the board.
The district will have to update all of the Master Plans for the 10 campuses, update costs on the proposed projects and set priorities.
“You are going to have to look at each site,” she said. “Because there’s not enough money to do everything (on the Master Plans).”
She said each of the campuses needs to meet with their stakeholders and go over what has been done, what needs to be done and what has developed since the Master Plans were developed.
At one time, the total for all of the projects on all the Master Plans was north of $210 million. But some projects have been done since the plans were finished.
With the exception of the high school, most of the Master Plans for the rest of the campuses were developed in 2010 and 2011.
And, she reminded the board that it would have to add in another 30 percent for “soft costs,” items such as design and permits and the like. “Also, fees from the DSA (Division of the State Architect) are going up,” she said.
The timeline the district is eyeing is planning and revising the Master Plans starting in February and running into May at which time the architects will need about four weeks for the revisions and the engineers would need about four weeks to re-figure cost estimates. The board would have a first reading on the revisions in June with a vote set for August, and design would start in November.
“Because we still have projects using Measure H money, you won’t see a stop (to construction),” she said. Measure H was the $40-million bond issue voters approves in 2010.
Dale said Measure H projects would continue through this year, 2018 and 2019.
“And we’re going to look and see where we can squeeze state money to fill,” she said.
The state still has funding for mechanical systems under Proposition 39, and will have $7 billion available under Proposition 51 that was passed in November. “Right now, there’s a backlog of projects inline,” she said. “The state doesn’t have the personnel.”
“But anything we can do to make the funding go further, we’ll do,” she added.
Board member John Kelly thought the schedule was “ambitious.”
“We may want to push the first projects into 2019,” he said. “That would give us some flexibility.”
Superintendent Louann Carlomagno reminded the audience that the Master Plans for each of the campuses are on the district’s website.
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