FILLMORE : Mistake Sets Back School Expansion

A project to expand the city’s lone middle school suffered a setback when the Fillmore Unified School District’s Board of Trustees learned that a planned school will cost about $800,000 more than expected.

Bill Davis, an architect who has been working with the district on the project since its conception in 1987, told the board that he had made an error of 6,500 square feet in computing the size of the proposed gym, and that actual costs would be $750,000-$800,000 over the original $3.2-million projection.

“I can’t imagine how this could have happened,” Davis told the board at it’s Tuesday meeting.

District Supt. Marlene Davis said $1.2 million has already been spent on a 16-acre lot on Second Street, the site of the proposed expansion, with another $250,000 going toward necessary site work.

The board had planned to build a gymnasium and library without spending more than $3.2 million, and rejected construction bids on the project that were about $1 million over budget.

The district is using what’s left of a $5-million bond passed by the community in 1987. The state will help fund only the construction of classroom facilities. No construction has begun on the site, and Davis said Tuesday’s news was just part of a series of misfortunes which have plagued the project and pushed its initial 1990 target date to “perhaps infinity.”