The August 20, 2013 board meeting of the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) contemplated hiring an archetict for a new elementary school. The minutes have not been published yet but I assume the contract was approved.
The school is to have 36 classrooms, will be about 85,000 square feet and is planned to cost about $12.4 million dollars. The school is being called E-17 pending the naming process.
The architect is to design the school and (I presume) oversee the construction. The fee will be $835,974.
Why?
The school district has over 50 elementary schools in operation now. Why does this new school have to have a unique design?
We have built new elementary schools recently. Why can’t we come up with a design every 10 years or so (depending on how often requirements and standards change) and use that design for each new school?
We would probably not save the full fee. The construction management portion typically costs about 25% from what I have been able to find out.
Funding
If you are curious about where the money is going to come from, the documents indicate that the money will come out of the 2007 bond election.
Unfortunately we will probably finance the architectural fees thus doubling or tripling the cost to us.
We have trouble enough getting money to the classrooms where it belongs as it is.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
A million here….$800,000 there…another million over there…$70 mil downtown. The new EPISD guy already wants to hire more outside consultants to help insure that people are simply doing the right thing. But hey, who’s counting? What’s really sick is that we’re doing this after having watched the Federal debt pile up over the past 12 years. We’ve learned nothing from the mistakes of others. Just the opposite.
Meanwhile, we can’t maintain our streets or even cut the weeds that are all grown up in the medians along Mesa. We just keep expanding and building more things that will not be properly maintained. But supposedly it’s all good.
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Speaking of expenditures, we’ve had 7 years to fix the major storm drainage problems, but some of the most critical projects still aren’t completed. I-10 at Piedras was shut down again today for the third or fourth time in about 10 years. Meanwhile, we’re saying we can implode city hall, buy and remodel buildings for city management, and build a new ballpark for Mountainstar, all in less than a year. So much for priorities. It’s amazing how quickly we move for a select few.
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