Muscogee County School Board approves expansion of new Fort gym project

In an often divisive three-hour meeting Monday night, the Muscogee County School Board found unanimity in the agenda's most costly action item.

The board approved with an 8-0 vote (Athavia "A.J." Senior was absent) expanding the scope of the project that will produce a new gym at Fort Middle School, increasing the cost from $2.9 million to $5.1 million.

The new gym was budgeted at $2.9 million as one of the 24 projects totaling $192,185,000 funded by the 1 percent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax that Columbus voters renewed in March. But the Muscogee County School District administration later determined the original plan wouldn't be adequate. So it now includes new locker rooms, showers, toilets, concessions, coaches offices and storage. The existing boys locker room will be remodeled into a football locker room and weight room. The existing girls locker room will be remodeled into storage.

The administration also determined it would be wise to include painting, interior partitions and flooring in needed areas around the school as well as a new kitchen hood and serving lines for the cafeteria.

All of which increased the estimated cost of the project to $5,190,000. So the steps the administration requested and the board approved include:

Negotiate with the already approved architect (Neal Kendust & Murray) for design and construction.

Reallocate $290,000 from the General Facilities Needs fund to the project.

In addition to the $2.9 million from the renewed SPLOST and the reallocated $290,000, the project will use $1.3 million from the state's capital outlay grant, $600,000 from the renewed SPLOST's general facilities project and $100,000 from the renewed SPLOST's refurbishing kitchens project.

Superintendent David Lewis said the expanded scope of the gym is closer to the deferred project that was on the SPLOST list voters approved in 2009. MCSD construction director Bobby Hecht said adding the other work around the school will save money instead of doing those jobs in separate projects. David Goldberg, the district's interim chief of operations, said combining the work also will mean the school won't be disrupted two years later.

Law firm

In a 6-2 vote, with John Thomas of District 2 and Frank Myers of District 8 in opposition, the board approved Lewis' recommendation to appoint the Hall Booth Smith PC as the school district's legal counsel.

Hall Booth is a regional law firm with offices throughout the Southeast, including Columbus. It is one of the firms where lawyers from the school district's current legal counsel, Hatcher, Stubbs, Land, Hollis & Rothschild, will work as of Jan. 1, when Hatcher Stubbs officially breaks up.

Hatcher Stubbs has been MCSD's lone legal counsel in the 65-year history of the school district. The Hatcher Stubbs lawyers who have been doing the bulk of the legal work for MCSD, Greg Ellington, Melanie Slaton and Chuck Staples, are among those moving to Hall Booth.

Hall Booth will charge the school district an hourly rate of $165 for work by partners and $115 for work by associates at the firm. Those are the same rates Hatcher Stubbs has charged the district.

Myers cited a board policy that says "legal counsel shall be appointed by the board," but Lewis cited another board policy that says the appointment should come "upon the recommendation of the superintendent."

Lewis said he appointed a committee of district administrators whose jobs require them to often use legal services to help him make the recommendation: Goldberg, student services chief Melvin Blackwell, chief financial officer Theresa Thornton, Tracy Fox of risk management, Mary Lewis of special education and human resources chief Kathy Tessin.

Superintendent spending

Four months after originally trying to get his proposal approved, John Thomas finally got the board to vote on his request for a new policy concerning the superintendent's spending.

And it failed by a 3-4-1 vote.

Thomas' proposal asked for all financial transactions approved by the superintendent without the board's consent to be "prominently featured" on a new page on the district's website. The proposed policy states that the report shall include the transaction's date, the name of the entity receiving the payment, the purpose of the expenditure, the amount and the person(s) who authorized it.

Board policy allows the superintendent to authorize without board approval any contract for public works construction that doesn't exceed $50,000 and any other school district purpose if the expenditure doesn't exceed $15,000. Those thresholds are lifted in case of an emergency, defined in the board's policy as "an eventuality, which cannot reasonably be foreseen and which if not corrected immediately will result in harm to people or property or in economic loss to the school system, or in substantial disruption of the instructional program."

Although the Oct. 19 agenda item's cover sheet contains the specificity Thomas requested in his proposal, the actual documents the board approved turned the wording into a more vague commitment. The agenda item also turned his request for a new policy into amendments to three existing policies.

Thomas tried to withdraw his proposal during the Oct. 19 meeting, but his effort failed 3-6, with Mark Cantrell of District 6 and Frank Myers of District 8 supporting him. Then in a 5-3-1 vote, the board approved the altered version of Thomas' proposal, which Thomas, Cantrell and Myers voted against. Naomi Buckner of District 4 abstained.

Monday night's vote split the same way, with Thomas, Cantrell and Myers voting yes and Buckner abstaining.

Mark Rice, 706-576-6272. Follow him on Twitter@MarkRiceLE.

This story was originally published December 14, 2015 at 10:11 PM with the headline "Muscogee County School Board approves expansion of new Fort gym project ."