BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer
MILLSTONE — The school district may have to pay as much as $1 million for grading work at the middle school site that it almost got for free.
At the Board of Education’s Dec. 12 meeting, Arthur San Fillipo, an architect with The Thomas Group in Princeton, which is the firm designing the school, said that Orleans Development Corp.’s original proposal to take soil off the middle school site in exchange for grading the property is no longer feasible. He said the board now needs to execute a change order to regrade the fields.
In 2004, the Examiner reported that the Pennsylvania-based Orleans Development Corp., which is building 15 houses next to the new middle school site off Waters Lane, could save the district $200,000 for grading the site in exchange for free fill dirt for its houses. According to that article, the school property has excess soil that needs to be removed.
Board member Laura Dreifus said she is very upset about the situation.
“We weren’t supposed to incur this cost,” she said. “It’s not right for the taxpayers here.”
When she asked if the board had any recourse, Business Administrator Brian Boyle said the school district has been fighting the issue for nine months.
Kathy Winecoff, who was president of the board in 2004, said Orleans Development Corp. also said it would dig the drainage ditches on both sides of the school property. However, Boyle said the company would no longer do that either.
Winecoff said she wants to know how something like this could happen.
“It was very clear that grading was part of the whole deal,” she said. “Somewhere, somebody messed up. Was it when the township closed the deal?”
According to Boyle, when Orleans Development Corp. submitted its development plans to the Township Committee, the grading and excavation plans were included, but they were not the way The Thomas Group wanted them. The Planning Board, which approved the resolution regarding the plans, would not have known that, though, he said.
Board member Thomas Foley said the resolution the Planning Board passed regarding the developer’s plans was not clear so Orleans Development Corp. does not have to do what the board thought it would do.
Board of Education President Mary Ann Friedman added that since the Planning Board r esolution was vague, there is nothing the Township Committee could do now to make Orleans Development Corp. comply with the former proposal.
When later contacted about the issue, Deputy Mayor Robert Kinsey said that at Boyle’s request, he has been working with the township’s attorney and engineer over the past five months to help mitigate the issue. He said Boyle contacted him in July, frustrated with Orleans Development Corp.’s refusal to accommodate the request of the board’s engineer to execute a grading plan for the athletic fields at the new middle school.
According to Kinsey, the grading plans that the board engineer asked the developer to perform were not discussed or presented for inclusion in the Planning Board’s resolution at the time the resolution was drafted.
“The question I have is why not?” Kinsey said. “Who dropped the ball at the Board of Education level?”
Kinsey said if the board’s engineer brought forth the grading plan in a timely manner and presented it to everyone involved to consider before the Planning Board adopted the resolution, the plan would not have been dismissed in its entirety.
He said that certain board and community members balked when the township offered to hold on to the acreage that the athletic fields are on in order to secure additional state funds to help defray the costs of the fields.
“The Township Committee acquiesced to the board’s desire and therefore did not pursue state funds on their behalf and therewith forfeited approximately $400,000 as a result,” Kinsey said. “Talk about being shortsighted.”
Kinsey asked if the school referendum passed by the voters in March 2004 included a cost estimate for the construction and grading of the athletic fields. He asked if the referendum passed before the board had any conversations with Orleans Development Corp. regarding the proposed grading plan.
“Why are those cost estimates no longer valid?” Kinsey asked. “Why are the board professionals now telling us that we need to spend an additional $1 million over and above the original plan to establish and grade the athletic fields?”
Kinsey continued, “Did the board professionals screw up on their original cost estimates?”
He said it appears that the board professionals have a lot of explaining to do.
“So far,” Kinsey said, “I have only seen these board professionals point fingers and blame others for this current mess.”
The middle school’s construction manager, Bill Skillman, of Hill International, said he does not believe the $1 million cost the contractor estimated for the grading work is a fair or equitable estimation. He said his company estimated the cost of the work at about $885,000. By leaving the soil on site rather than removing it, the cost could go down to $685,000, he said, plus the purchase of a $20,000 pump.
The board ultimately voted 7-1 to approve The Thomas Group’s design for regrading the fields at the new middle school, which would use on-site soils. The cost of the design is not to exceed $24,200. Winecoff cast the dissenting vote.
San Fillipo said the redesigns for the topography and septics would take a month off his company’s time. He also said it would take eight to 12 weeks for the Freehold Soils Conservation District to review the work.
San Fillipo said it would take a month for the district to bid the grading work. He also estimated that it would take about 20 weeks to get a shovel into the ground.
“We need to have the septic field to open the new school,” board member Holly Deitz said. “Whether or not we agree with what’s going on, we need to push forward.”