Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Valencia High to build athletic complex

Kenn Rodriguez News-Bulletin Staff Writer; krodriguez@news-bulletin.com

Los Lunas Athletes at the new Valencia High School should be playing and practicing on their own athletic fields come the beginning of the next school year after the Los Lunas School Board unanimously approved a bid to construct the new VHS Athletic Complex.

By a 5-0 vote at its regular meeting Tuesday, Jan. 8, the board approved the low bid of $1,996,400.00 by A.S. Horner, Inc. of Littleton, Colo. - a bid that superintendent Walt Gibson said was "significantly lower" than what the district projected.

Because of that, the district was able to include and approve four alternative bids to the project that includes asphalt paving for the main parking lot and the northwest parking lot at the complex, installation of a sod playing and practice field, and installation of parking lot lighting and preparation for field lighting on all three planned fields.

"It's a good company, a solid company," Gibson said of A.S. Horner. "They're mostly known for their road work, but they move a lot of earth. So we're excited."

Gibson said the discrepancy between the budget and the low bids allowed the district to complete the entire project at once.

"We'd set aside $3.5 million (for the project)," said Gibson. "The first bid opened at $2.35 (million), then there were a couple in that range. Actually one came in at $3.6 million, then the final bid was just under $2 million."

"We don't think we misestimated it," he said. "The construction trades in New Mexico have dropped off dramatically, both residential and commercial. And we had five bidders. They were all substantially under what we expected the bid to be. And it's going to allow us to build the complex — plus the alternatives — and still come within budget."

The stubbing out of the electrical conduits and concrete bases for field lighting means that the district may be able to have nighttime football games when the season begins in September. The district is still seeking to secure funding for lighting on the football, baseball and softball fields at Valencia High.

The decision on the athletic complex was to be made at the Dec. 18 board meeting, but was tabled after a slight discrepancy was found in A.S. Horner's bid. Gibson said the discrepancy was a spreadsheet mistake and did not affect Horner's status as low bidder.

In other business:

The board also discussed the district's transition to having all elementary schools as kindergarten through sixth grade, as well as the new elementary school boundaries.

Gibson said redrawing the school boundaries is a difficult but a necessary endeavor.

"It's always a difficult decision," he said. "The bottom line is this is compounded by the fact that not only are we moving the boundaries, but we're also moving everyone K-6. The grade configuration of each of our schools is going to change. So kids are going to move. There's just no question.

"Our goal in this is to make them fair, make them reasonable and respect the natural and neighborhood boundaries," he said. "But I also don't want to put a kid, or any student, in a classroom next fall and then have them change in January. So what we need to do, we can just move as seamlessly as possibly in January when we open a new school."

Gibson said the redrawing of elementary school boundaries would likely affect students from Los Lunas' eastside, as well as the westside.

"It affects the eastside at least as equally because everything is moving east," he said. "As you populate a school here, you start to move everything. It's going to be an interesting challenge. The personal feelings and the loyalties to school — you can't discount that.

"Our promise has been consistency," Gibson said. "As we've created consistent programs — so if your kid moves from one school to another — what your kids has at one schools is what they have at the other."

The board also approved an 11-person committee to choose a name for the Teacher Resource Center.

In other board business, the board heard a report from Valencia Elementary School principal Jim Snell, and a report on publicity for the upcoming $30 mil bond election that will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 29.

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