School board calls meeting for athletics bids approval

Published 8:57 am Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The Clark County Board of Education will host a special meeting tonight to discuss and potentially approve bids for the gymnasium and athletic facilities at George Rogers Clark High School.

Beginning at 6 p.m., the Clark County School District Finance Corporation will meet to consider adopting a resolution to issue revenue bonds to fund the project.

Immediately following at 6:30 p.m., the school board will convene to consider approval of the bids for the athletics complex project and its alternates.

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The base bid for the project, including all of the gymnasium and a football stadium with home seating for 4,000 but no visitor seating, came in at more than $20 million, higher than the board’s previous estimate of about $17 million.

The alternates were bid out as potential parts of the project, including the addition of visitor seating, installation of tennis courts and additional grading in the area around the high school to facilitate the future construction of baseball and softball fields and a field house.

With all of the alternates in the bid package included, the cost jumped to more than $21.3 million.

Board members indicated in a meeting last week they were interested in financing all of the project alternates.

Joe Nance, a financial advisor for Ross Tarrant, the architect for the project, told the board last week it access to some additional bonds through the state, and a transfer during the last fiscal year of $2 million for use on the project bringing the board’s total capacity closer to $27 million.

Nance said Superintendent Paul Christy expressed a willingness to transfer an additional $400,000 from the district’s $14 million reserve fund to help meet costs.

Board members will also view student achievement reports from the district’s four elementary schools during tonight’s meeting.