School board rejects bid for Bumpus athletic upgrades

The Hoover school board in April voted to reject a bid to upgrade the athletic facilities at Bumpus Middle School after the lowest bid came in higher than school officials had budgeted. However, the board approved renovation work at the Riverchase Career Connection Center.

The proposed project at Bumpus involved new home bleachers, restrooms, a concession stand, lighting, a press box and fieldhouse for the football field and a press box and lighting for the softball field.

School officials budgeted $4.45 million for the project, but the lowest bid — from Blalock Building Co. — came in at $4.5 million for the base part of the bid and a total of $5,363,000 when alternate projects were included, such as the storage building and softball part of the project, said Matt Wilson, the school system’s director of operations. The second bid was significantly higher, Wilson said.

Superintendent Dee Fowler recommended the school board reject the bids and said he would like to break the project into smaller, more affordable pieces and take another look at the project for the next fiscal year.

“We don’t want to drag our feet,” Fowler said.

A similar athletic field upgrade is planned for Berry Middle School, but planning for that project has trailed the Bumpus project.

The school board did approve a bid from Duncan & Thompson Construction to convert one classroom at the Riverchase Career Connection Center into a cosmetology and barbering classroom, with the equipment for such instruction.

The school board initially received only one bid for the project — from Jared Building Co. — and chose in March to reject that bid and authorize central office staff to try to negotiate a lower price. The original bid was about $625,000, and school officials had anticipated the cost to be in the $360,000 to $370,000 range, Wilson said.

Over the next month, Wilson got Jared Building Co. down to about $594,000, but Duncan & Thompson offered to do the project for about $578,000, so the school board went with Duncan and Thompson.

School board President Amy Tosney noted that the school system is familiar with Duncan & Thompson and knows that company does good work, and Wilson concurred.

The school board also amended its fiscal 2023 budget to reflect the actual fund balance at the beginning of the fiscal year, carryover federal funds from the previous year, additional state and federal revenues, which were unknown at the time the original budget was passed, and a new projected ending balance.

The beginning fund balance was $122.3 million, which was about $729,000 more than had been projected due to unfilled employee positions and capital projects that were delayed due to the increased costs of building materials and labor, Chief Financial Officer Michele McCay said.

The system also carried over $6.5 million in federal funds from the previous fiscal year and has received about $1.3 million in state and federal money that had been unanticipated, including money for the Alabama Reading Initiative and special education needs, McCay said.

The new projected ending balance on Sept. 30 is $104.7 million, which is about $500,000 more than originally anticipated and still enough to cover six months’ worth of school system expenses, McCay said.

The Hoover school system still expects to dip into its reserves by $14.2 million to pay for various capital projects this fiscal year, she said.