The Conewago Valley School board agreed to accept construction bids for the Conewago Township Elementary project and passed its Fiscal Year 2025-26 budget during a meeting on Monday. The $87,894,757 new budget includes a property tax increase.
The new budget includes a real estate tax of 17.2324 mills.
In FY 2024-25, the tax was 15.6691 mills.
The budget retains the 1% income tax, 0.5% real estate transfer tax, $5 per capita tax, and 5% amusement tax from the previous year’s budget. It also keeps the tax of either $10 or $52 Occupation Privilege Tax (determined according to the municipality.)
Construction project
As the board considered the new budget over the past several months, it also evaluated construction options for the elementary school construction and renovations project. While the board is working on both of its elementary schools, the first up for construction bids was Conewago Township Elementary.
The board accepted a general construction base bid from Lobar Inc. of $19,327,000, with construction alternates driving the price down to $19,017,000. One alternative includes switching from a rubberized material for the playground to using mulch in order to realize cost savings.
The awarded base bid for HVAC construction was $6,148,000 from Midline Mechanical, with an alternate for a heat pump replacement pushing the price up to $6,315,000.
Another awarded base bid for plumbing construction by Myco Mechanical was $2,727,000, with an alternate for retaining kindergarten wing casework slightly lowering the price to $2,703,000.
The final awarded bid was for electrical work on the project. It was awarded to Midstate Mechanical & Electrical. The base bid for $4,888,000 was driven up slightly by an alternate for unclassified excavation, leaving the final total at $4,893,531.
In addition to the awarded construction bids, the board also voted to approve a testing services contract with Barry Isett and Associates Inc. for $247,258.
Monday’s vote on the bids was preceded by discussion during the board caucus meeting on June 2. During that meeting, a representative from Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates (CRA), the architectural design firm working on the elementary school projects, presented the bids that had been submitted for the CTE project.
During the June 2 meeting, Anthony Colestock, a senior project manager with CRA, went over the bids in each category for the board to review.
Colestock said the bids were higher than the estimate included in the Act 34 hearing.
“I will start this off and share with you that when you compare the construction cost estimate from the Act 34 hearing total project estimate, it is the bids plus the alternates are currently about 4.5% over that Act 34 estimate, so it’s about 4.5% over,” Colestock said. “Typically, we would like to see anywhere in the range of 2-3% under-budget or over-budget. We would feel that is a successful bid. So right now, we’re just a little bit over 4.5% for the total project.”
In addition to the base bids, Colestock presented alternates that included both price increases and decreases according to whether they were adding or removing from the base workload.
While some of the alternates raised the total price, some were anticipated to be cost-effective, such as the alternates for unclassified excavation. In that case, Colestock said the district could pay a one-time fee to remove rock found by the excavators rather than paying unit cost as rock is discovered. Colestock felt that alternative was a “great value for an insurance policy.”
Another cost-saving alternative included the one for kindergarten casework, which removed the cost of adding new casework as it reuses the casework from the current building.
In total, the base bids were 8.5%, or $2,629,361, over budget. With the proposed alternates, as well as lower-than-anticipated testing costs, Colestock said the price tag was reduced to being 4.6% over budget, or about $1.7 million.
With the construction bids awarded as of Monday evening, the contracts will be finalized, and site work will begin, according to Colestock.
While the project coming in over-budget was disappointing, Colestock praised the district administration for working on designing a facility that will meet the district’s needs as inexpensively as possible.
“We all sat and we talked about what would be in the best interest of the district,” Colestock said on June 2. “They’ve all been great as part of the design meetings, and during design, we went through a lot of that value engineering effort. Do it now so you don’t have to do it after the numbers come in and, understanding that the budget is a concern, try to make this lean and mean.”
During the caucus meeting, board member Lindsay Krug had expressed frustration with the price of the CTE project. She has also voiced concern in previous meetings and, both in previous meetings and during the June 2 caucus, questioned why the price rose over the past couple of years the board has pursued the project.
Colestock explained in a previous meeting that President Donald Trump’s tariffs contributed to the rising costs.
During the caucus meeting, when a board member questioned why the cost of HVAC was so high, Colestock again mentioned the tariffs.
“I think this kind of goes back to the discussion we had with the tariffs and some of the construction cost, or the material cost, excuse me, that were increasing, especially with sheet metal,” Colestock said.
Additionally, inflation since 2021 and space added to the project by the district since early designs also raised the price.
“The scope of work has changed, whether it’s maybe special education, the amount of classrooms from those early presentations,” Colestock said on June 2. “The educational program has evolved from the study phase through the option development and then into the project. So some of the educational program has changed and when the educational program changes, the building square footage is going to have to change, as well… And also, some of those early estimates are from, you know, 2021, and they’re four years old. Naturally there’s going to be inflation and cost escalation.”
The board approved the design changes that contributed to the rising costs after reviewing the district’s needs.
“That was something that during design development that after we got into more detail of understanding the existing conditions of the project, how the school needed to operate, how the flow of traffic from the bus riders to the parent riders to their classrooms, or dismissal from the classrooms to the drop-off areas, that there was some wasted space in that courtyard that wasn’t going to be used and there were some pinch points within the design,” Colestock said during the caucus meeting. “We reviewed it with the administration and presented it to the board, and that was all part of prior to the Act 34 hearing, which you had approved to add that additional square footage into the construction project.”
During last week’s caucus meeting, board president Jeffrey Kindschuh also briefly reviewed the steps the district had taken with the project, including expanding the project and determining site work costs in August 2024.
One community member spoke against the project, citing cost concerns, preceding the board vote on Monday evening.
The board approved the construction with a split vote.
The Act 34 booklet, CTE bid summary and tabulation are all available to review on the district website.
Board business
Kindschuh thanked Michael Buckley for serving as the board treasurer for several years and announced the position will now be held by board member David Thad Meckley.
The board accepted several donations to the district, listed according to the board agenda: Dairy Dan Food Truck donated $150 for the Science Olympiad; Food Adventures Food Truck donated $220 for the class of 2026; Shorty’s Food Truck donated $325 for Rho Kappa; The Mexican Food Truck donated $190 for the Culture Club
The board also accepted donations of materials on behalf of the American Heart Association for the middle school health and PE department valued at $750, according to the board agenda.
An executive session was held prior to the open meeting in order to discuss personnel issues, according to Kindschuh.
The next board meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, July 14.
Imari Scarbrough is a freelance journalist. She was a staff newspaper reporter for five years before becoming a freelancer in 2017. She has written on crime, environmental issues, severe weather events, local and regional government and more.
You can visit her website at ImariJournal.com.