Herbert Hoover High Principal Mike Kelley walks through a hallway in the former Hoover building that was filled with slick mud by the June 2016 flood. The building was closed, and students are attending classes in portable rooms until a new school is built. Gazette-Mail file photo
By: Ryan Quinn, Staff Writer | Posted: May 21, 2018 | Source: WV Gazette-Mail
Several state School Building Authority board members Monday opposed voting on the contested bid to demolish Kanawha County’s former Herbert Hoover High building, and the SBA’s board executive director said after the vote that he doesn’t plan to put the issue on a meeting agenda.
Executive Director David Roach didn’t mention any county’s name when he described the situation to SBA board members Monday and asked them whether they wanted to vote on it later.
But Roach said the unnamed county public school system’s request for an SBA board vote on such an issue was unprecedented, and what he described matched what Kanawha has gone through.
“They want to pass the buck. If you want me to put it on the agenda for the 18th, I will. But if we haven’t done it, I’m not sure why we would start,” Roach said of voting on the bid. He neither confirmed nor denied the requesting county was Kanawha.
On May 10, the Kanawha Board of Education unanimously voted to pay about $383,000 to Charleston-based Rodney Loftis & Son Contracting to demolish Hoover’s flood-damaged former building, despite objections at the meeting from representatives of Baltimore- and Fairmont-based Reclaim Company LLC, which bid $339,000.
But before that motion passed, the board unanimously agreed with board member Ryan White’s amendment to the motion, which made the contract approval contingent on further approval by the SBA board, whose staff recommended picking Rodney Loftis & Son over the lower-bidding Reclaim due to what SBA staff said was an incomplete bid form.
“I think that will give us cover,” White said May 10.
The SBA board’s Construction Committee decided Monday, in a voice vote with no nays heard, to not put such a vote for further approval on a future agenda, though committee members later stated it wasn’t an official vote. Regardless, Roach said after the meeting that he’s not planning to place the item on an agenda now.
The committee meeting included four of the full SBA board members: Steve Burton, Robert Holroyd, Dave Perry and Vic Gabriel. There are 11 members on the full board.
Perry, in making Monday’s motion, suggested not taking away past practice and precedent.
White said Monday he doesn’t know whether he’ll recommend to the rest of the Kanawha school board members that they back off of the SBA board approval caveat he suggested.
“I don’t see what the big deal is really,” White said. “This is about accountability, but if in some way [SBA board members] were informed [of SBA staff’s action], maybe that’s good enough, because we do need to move along.”
White is a financial bond attorney whose three-person law firm, which he co-owns, recently provided work for the SBA.
Reclaim just wrote “not applicable” on SBA Form 123, which requires bidders to list subcontractors and equipment/material suppliers they plan to use on a project. Reclaim legal representatives said May 10 the company didn’t plan to use any subcontractors, and that it was going to contest the bid award.
The form’s instructions say, among other things, that “if no subcontractors will be used to complete the project indicate on the SBA Form 123 that all work will be self-performed and provide the name and contractor license number of the contractor that will be performing the work.”
It also says the “SBA shall be the sole interpreter of this document to ensure that the information provided by the prime contractor meets the intent of the form,” and, if it doesn’t, the proposal will be rejected.
Mike Hall, an SBA assistant director of school planning and construction, wrote an April 16 letter recommending Rodney Loftis & Son, “based on the information received and the incomplete SBA 123” Reclaim submitted.
Ben Ashley, another SBA assistant director, said that while what Reclaim did may be considered an informality, “if we waive an informality for one we would possibly do that for any project down the road, and we don’t want to set that precedent.”
“Because bidding is such a dot your i’s and cross your t’s process, and if you can’t get that right, we doubt you do other things correctly,” Roach said of the unnamed company at issue Monday.
The SBA is involved because it handles the Federal Emergency Management Agency flood recovery funds, which are expected to largely pay for the demolition.
SBA officials said that the unnamed company at issue Monday also didn’t ever turn in a Form 123 to the SBA — it only sent it to the county itself.
The form says just under its title that it “must be submitted to the SBA within two hours of the close of bid.” Reclaim legal representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment late Monday afternoon.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.
