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Fredonia project summarized

Numerous improvements, additions made in three years of work

Fredonia Central Schools.

The Fredonia school district’s capital project, finishing up after three years of work, was summarized by Superintendent Jeff Sortisio at the recent Board of Education meeting.

“We really nailed it with the bids,” he said. “To be fully transparent, maybe our original estimates were a little higher than we expected. In this case if they were a little bit higher, so be it, because in terms of our project, we were able to get everything on our ‘must’ list and our ‘want’ list.”

The $8.5 million project was passed by school district voters in December 2017 by a 297-144 vote. Items in the project included repaved parking lots, walkways and driveways; new bleachers and a new girls’ team room in the high school gym; drainage improvements on the athletic fields; a new high school entrance and office; and roof work at the Wheelock school.

Sortisio said that the district was able to go beyond musts and wants, as it had money left over.

“Sometimes it’s called ‘scope creep’ because you are doing more,” he said. “The question becomes, do you do these things simply because you have the money or do you do these things because they are really things that need to be done? In my mind, the things that we added to the project … were still needs.”

The entryway at Fredonia Central Schools.

There were 13 items added in total, including things such as carpet replacements, more mailboxes for the high school office, pool locker room and Life Skills classroom renovations and trophy cases near the high school cafeteria.

“Did we need new trophy cases? You know what, that’s probably more of a want,” Sortisio said. “But I’m really excited to see what they look like when they’re done, and what we’ll be able to do in that greater space outside the auditorium.”

In all, there were 37 changes, or ‘change orders,’ made to the project.

“Change orders can get a bad name … because sometimes you have a change order where a mistake was made,” Sortisio said. “There’s other change orders that are because we asked for additional work to be done.”

Of the 37 change orders, 19 were what Sortisio called “added scope,” 10 were as a result of a building condition that was unknown prior to construction, and eight were due to errors in design.

Sortisio acknowledged dissatisfaction with two jobs: some outdoor concrete work and a new walkway near the baseball field. He said the concrete was already cracking, probably because it was installed in hot weather but not wetted down as it set. A failure notice has been sent to the contractor and a redo was requested. As for the walkway, Sortisio said no plan was made for its drainage, so now it collects water in spots. He said options for a fix there were still under assessment.

Despite some setbacks, overall, “this is a really fantastic project,” the superintendent concluded. “We’ve really been able to do some necessary things. … Thank you to our community for their willingness to invest in this district.”

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