Committee Plans to Seek Council Opinion in Middle School Project

Each week, it seems as though the news isn't getting any better for members of Southington's Middle School Building Committee.

With project overruns already putting the $85 million project more than $4 million in the red, representatives of Fletcher Thompson on Tuesday revealed that when they calculated the costs associated with remediation of PCBs from DePaolo Middle School and Kennedy Middle School, they did not calculate an additional $140,000 associated with architecture fees for the additional year.

The worst part?

The project is already on life support and with no savings found in recent weeks, the committee may need to turn to the Southington Town Council for further opinion of how to move forward, Committee Chariman Edward Pocock Jr. said.

"We're coming to a point where we need to sit and seriously determine the best way to move forward with this project," Pocock said.

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The status of the project has been a concern since Nov. 6, when members of the committee found out that environmental cleanup costs were projected between $9 and $17 million - well above the alloted $2.8 million for the project.

To make matters worse, several mistakes in the calculations made by Fletcher Thompson helped push design development cost overruns to 10 percent for the project, leaving the town $4 million over budget even after value enginnering allowed members of the committee to reduce costs by over $10 million.

That's what has angered committee member Christopher Palmieri, who again spoke out this week regarding architectural mistakes that continue to cost the town.

Palmieri said he is "fed up" with the weekly cost increases.

"Week after week we keep getting more surprises even though we’re trying to be on top of things," Palmieri said. "It’s mistake after mistake that keeps costing us money."

The additional costs are part of a preliminary final assessment, Pocock said, but the committee is still stuck waiting for the final figures. He said those figures are expected next week and the committee could move forward with a motion to seek town council input at that time.

"Right now we are forging ahead because that's what we've been told to do, but this might come down to a decision that the council will have to make," he said.

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