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SAN BENITO — After a three-month shutdown, the San Benito school district’s new board of trustees is planning to jump-start a $40 million-bond funded project as officials await a survey’s findings aimed at determining whether the buildings’ foundations need repair.
Now, the district’s biggest construction project, which includes building San Benito’s first performing arts theater and aquatics center, stands about six months behind schedule.
Meanwhile, board members are considering the former project manager’s claims the district owes the company money after the past school board terminated its contract without cause.
Awaiting survey findings
In April, officials shut down the construction project after an architect serving as the new project manager questioned whether some supports, or geopiers, deeply-anchored 2-foot-wide rock columns, were not aligned with the foundations’ targets.
In response, district officials contracted a company to conduct a third survey to determine the geopiers’ alignment, school board President Orlando Lopez said.
“We hired an additional surveyor to come in and resolve this dispute that’s caused this project to halt,” he said in an interview.
By the end of the week, the firm’s expected to present its findings, he said.
“One of my main priorities is to get this bond project up and running,” Lopez said. “My main concern is whether this project was prematurely stopped. Unfortunately, it’s taken this long to get this project back on track. I don’t understand why it’s taken so long.”
Now, preliminary findings indicate the geopiers’ alignment might not be as big of a problem as some officials believed, board member Rudy Corona, who oversees the district’s building committee, said.
“Our attorney is saying he doesn’t think it’s as bad as they were saying,” he said in an interview, referring to the past school board. “Right now, it is under review to make sure the geopiers are aligned. Once we have an answer, we can start construction. We’re focused on getting this back on track because we want to finish these projects.”
Brighton Group claim
During closed-session discussions, board members have been reviewing a claim the Edinburg-based Brighton Group, the former project manager, has presented.
In February, the past school board agreed to terminate the firm’s contract without clause.
“Since then, we have issued a final invoice based on services rendered up to the date of termination,” Joseph Palacios, the company’s president, said in an interview.
Palacios, who said the district has not paid his company since a December 2020 payment of $1.25 million, said the district owes the firm $460,000.
“We have not been compensated for two years, and we want that closed out,” he said. “We’re trying to amicably close this out. We have obviously been financially impacted by this bond program.”
Reviewing contract termination
Meanwhile, board members are reviewing the district’s decision to terminate the company’s contract, Lopez said.
“We’re going to see if there was any reason to let him go,” he said, referring to Palacios. “We still haven’t seen anything he did wrong. We got rid of him without cause, so that should speak for itself.”
For months, members of the past school board questioned the Brighton Group’s contract, which a previous school board had approved.
“Politics has played a very big role in this adverse treatment we’ve had all along,” Palacios said, referring to the past school board.
As part of a contract, a previous school board agreed to pay the Brighton Group $1.25 million.
Under the agreement, the district was paying the company $50,000 a month.
“The aforementioned amounts are being calculated upon an estimate of $30 million in final construction costs, not including costs of consultants …,” the contract states.
Background
In 2018, a previous administration proposed a $40 million bond issue to fund construction of a $21.3 million performing arts theater, an $8.8 million aquatics center and a $5.7 million indoor practice field, which 54 percent of voters passed.
In October 2021, Davila Construction launched the project to build the performing arts theater and aquatics center.
