Mission school board delays Cantu Jr. High HVAC project

Mission school board trustees voted earlier this month to table a $2.16 million HVAC overhaul at Rafael Cantu Jr. High until they receive more information on district facilities sometime around February.

 

 

The school district is currently in the process of retrofitting HVAC systems at campuses districtwide.

 

HVAC projects are at different levels of completion at nine campuses and the district’s administration is currently working on a financial plan to address the rest of its HVAC projects.

 

Cantu wasn’t one of those nine initial campuses.

 

The 17-year-old school wasn’t rated as a priority until this summer, when its HVAC system failed, bumping it higher up on the list.

 

Trustees discussed at their Nov. 13 meeting whether to pull $2.16 million out of the district’s fund balance to address that issue.

 

They also discussed whether to bid that project through competitive sealed proposals or through a design-build process.

 

Traditionally, possibly exclusively, the district has bid projects through competitive sealed proposals.

 

A design-build project would limit the district’s input in certain capacities, but would cut out finger-pointing in the event of potential litigation.

 

That’s particularly attractive to Mission trustees in the wake of its flaw-plagued Tom Landry Stadium renovation, litigation from which the district resolved last year after an ugly lawsuit.

 

A design-build would also, theoretically, make the project move faster.

 

“The project’s the project and the money’s the money, whether we go design-build or we go the way we used to…The savings is in time,” Trustee Jerry Zamora noted, arguing that the district’s other HVAC projects haven’t been moving particularly quickly.

 

If during the school year Cantu’s HVAC system goes “kaput,” as one administrator put it, the district could be left making the “hard decision” to relocate students.

 

The district has also poured money into maintenance rather than an all-out overhaul, Zamora noted.

 

With the exception of Zamora, trustees weren’t sold on pulling the trigger on the project.

 

They said they simply didn’t have enough information.

 

 

“I just feel that we’re all skeptical about design-build, because it’s an unknown,” Trustee Dolores “Loli” Reyna said.

 

Reyna and other trustees said they not only hoped to understand a design-build project better before embarking on one.

 

They also wanted to understand Cantu’s HVAC issues better, and hope a recently greenlit facilities study will give them a better idea of those issues when it’s done, sometime around February.

 

“We’ve waited this long. We never know about our HVACs at home either, when they’re gonna turn off or whatever,” Reyna said.

 

“Yes, we had an incident at Ralph Cantu. But if we wait for the data to come in, it may be something that could [just] be parts instead of replacing the whole thing.”

 

Trustee Natividad “Nati” Sosa, who said she’d probably support a design-build project, echoed that sentiment.

 

“This is what, a 17-year-old HVAC? Some are 20, 25. It could be something that’s an easier fix,” she said.

 

Trustees voted 5-1 to table the item.