BOE to receive McKinley presentation
By MICHAEL ERBPARKERSBURG - A representative from architectural firm McKinley & Associates must answer questions from the Wood County Board of Education Tuesday before the company can be considered for a more than $150,000 planning contract.
Representatives of the company are expected to make a presentation to the board, detailing how they would handle facilitation of Wood County Schools' Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan
Superintendent Bill Niday recommended hiring the firm to oversee creation of CEFP, which will be used to guide the district beginning in 2010 through 2020. The contract would cost Wood County Schools about $153,000, and work on the project is expected to take upward of two years. The state School Building Authority is expected to pay about $20,000 of the contract cost.
If approved by the board, McKinley & Associates would do a review of the current CEFP, do workshops with committees working on the new document, analyze data, do building tours and inspections and create comprehensive documents for each school in the district, Niday said.
However, some board members have expressed reservations in hiring the firm due to past job performance, and have asked representatives of the company to speak to the board before voting on the contract.
McKinley & Associates was one of six companies to express interest in the CEFP contract and one of two to apply for the job. McKinley was chosen over Architectural Visions Group, which has offices in West Lake, Ohio, and in Vienna. Niday said Architectural Visions Group did not have the proper state certification at the time of the hiring process and no experience with a planning project of this size in West Virginia.
McKinley & Associates also was the architectural firm during a the district's recently completed high schools renovation project. During the four-year project the cost of the project went from $50 million to more than $64 million due to increased costs in materials, higher-than-anticipated project bids and architectural problems.
Some board members have questioned allowing McKinley & Associates to facilitate creation of the CEFP, citing in particular problems at Parkersburg High School with early architectural designs that led to delays in construction and some increased costs.
However, Tuesday's meeting will concentrate on the upcoming CEFP, not past work, Niday said.
"My understanding is the board wanted some more clarifications on what would be done with the CEFP," he said. "This is to discuss the CEFP."
When asked if he expected the firm's architectural work at PHS to become a topic of discussion, Niday declined to comment.
"I cannot say," Niday said.
Board members chose not to vote on the hiring of McKinley & Associates at the December 2008 board meeting. Only three of the five board members were present at the last meeting, and those attending said they did not want to vote without further input from the absent members.
Niday said no vote would be taken at Tuesday's meeting concerning the hiring of McKinley & Associates.
"I will not ask them to vote on it at this time," he said. "We will have the recommendation at the next meeting."
