Last night, the Mason County Central (MCC) School Board in Scottville approved a bid for premium roof repairs to be done on most of their high school.  Four companies submitted bids and the superintendent was rather pleased with the low bid, as noted in the weekend local paper:

The high school will receive the best kind of roof they can receive and insulation made of a long-lasting material.  It will cover the most critical areas of the roof, primarily over 'B' and 'C' hall.  In the illustration below, it will likely cover the area outlined in red, a substantial part of the roof.  For those who never went to MCC, 'B' hall is to the north, 'C' hall is to the west.  From the description given by the superintendent, and the way it looks from above, this seems to be the full area to be re-roofed, which includes some of 'A' hall too.  

Using the scale, the area to be roofed seems to be approximately 44,000 square feet give or take a few hundred.  This will be done for a little over $176,000, which conveniently divides 44K almost evenly by four, meaning that every square foot will cost $4 to insulate and cover the school with topnotch materials.  If you recall in Fuzzy LASD Bond Math, an architect giving the Ludington Area School District (LASD) free consultation as to how much a new roof at Foster Elementary would minimally cost estimated that rate quite a lot higher, at $16 per square foot:

You will also notice from the bird's-eye view of Foster (below) that they have a slightly larger area to deal with; but when one looks at the roof from above, the area of the 'old roof' in white and light gray would be about the same if they, like MCC, determined that the black roof areas were fine for now.  

Of course, that would only come up if the LASD Board actually thought about containing their costs and conserving their assets (in other words:  your taxes)... and thinking for themselves rather than let out-of-town contractors do their thinking for them, and setting rates that defy common sense.  Even the common sense of another local school board. 

It's too bad LASD wants to spend $100 million on what could very well have been a project done at a quarter of the cost all around had they been fiscally conservative like many in their district have to be in order to keep up with the excesses of their governments.

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More than the roof, the $100plus million is exorbitant. It seems that there is enough padding in the $100 million for extreme misuse of funds, showing the few examples you have on bloated bidding, X. It was in the marketing to the public to pass that vote and I hope that those who orchestrated the campaign get their just rewards.

Could the paper have gotten the price of the roof repair wrong. It doesn't seem possible that there is such a huge difference between Ludington's bid numbers and Mason County's cost? If the figures are correct then we have a huge problem. There also needs to be a detailed explanation by the LSD as to why their costs are so high. Is it possible that Foster school was going to be decorated in gold leaf and marble gargoyles.

The MCC price is more in-line with how much roof replacements actually cost in the area, the one quoted by the GMB architect is totally out of the realm of reasonable, and would have to come with a lot of those marble gargoyles and gold leaf to sustain that high rate.

Am I missing something in all of this?

Is there a new plan to keep Foster School?

Or is the plan moving forward to abandoned the school and within that context  of not being able to sell it to possible raze it?
And then have the taxpayers on the hook to pay for the roof over the next 30 years. Same thing with the carpet and any other improvements to any of the other grade schools.

WTF why bother. Unless there is some way to be guarantee  that the taxpayers get their investment back who in their right mind would consider doing such a thing. 

Do they have a secret plan to turn Foster School into a grow house for pot?  Turn Lakeview School into a dispensary? Make Franklin into a Hookah Lounge? 

I heard of putting lipstick on a pig to make it more sellable to the greater fool, just not paying for the lipstick for 30 years.

The whole world has gone crazy. Well maybe not the whole world but the administration and board of the LASD is certainly due a psychiatric evlauation.

Madness.

Nope, no new plans to save Foster or any of the other soon-to-be-abandoned schools, just another analysis of a rather shady practice by GMB Architecture to make renovating school units seem an unattractive option, by inflating the cost to do so.  From GMB's angle, it's a lot easier for them to design a larger facility than to design one facility and significantly rework another.  

So instead of an honest assessment, you invent projects (like changing the ADA ramp when it's already compliant) and hyperinflate others, like the grease trap installation worth over $6000, and a redesign of the serving line at the cafeteria that costs a half of a million.  We will never see those things happen since Foster will need a foster mother and/or father to step in and do something innovative with the property.  That's a lot less likely since the school leaders will properly assess that they can charge a lot when selling it because of its upkeep over the years, and the property taxes will be quite high.  As will be the new owners if they do turn it into a growing facility.

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