SCASD board reviews potential cost cuts to State High project

On Monday evening, the State College Area School District board of directors reviewed recommendations for potential value engineering change orders in relation to the State High project, which could reduce the overall cost by more than $1.8 million.

Following the recommendation of the construction team, the board voted to approve the elimination of $152,300 in costs from the project in the shape of a rainwater harvesting system on the South Building roof.

The recommendation was made after the team determined that the system would neither pay for itself in water savings nor jeopardize the project’s LEED Gold Status.

As initially conceived, the system would have collected rainwater from the roof and stored it in a tank to be used as “gray water” for flushing toilets. The State High project currently has 72 LEED points, which places it safely between the 60- and 79-point range necessary to qualify for Gold Status.

Later in the evening, Ed Poprik, director of physical plant, presented several other potential value engineering change orders.

Potential changes included substituting aluminum conductors in place of copper ones for larger wire sizes, substituting a low-profile, base-mounted curb for a full-depth formed curb and forgoing restoration to take advantage of a contractor credit to remove and replace sections of the roof entirely.

These represented the first of two tiers of potential changes that when combined with the savings from the rainwater harvesting system, could lower costs by $1,815,300.

The board is expected to vote on the Group A changes on Feb. 22. Potential Group B changes will be reviewed during a later meeting.

During its previous meeting on Jan. 25, the board voted to approve a preliminary budget for 2016-2017 that included a real estate tax increase of 4.32 percent.

The increase can be broken down as the sum of the 2.4 percent allowed under the Act I Index, and the 1.92 percent for referendum debt exceptions.

On Monday, the board voted to apply for $1,760,579 in exception tax revenue. While the vote does not mean that the board is committed to taking the full exception, the opportunity would have been forfeited entirely if it did not apply by the Feb. 11 deadline.

This story was originally published February 8, 2016 at 10:20 PM with the headline "SCASD board reviews potential cost cuts to State High project."