$33.29 million contract for SV Middle School

The Scotts Valley Unified School District’s plans to begin reconstruction of its middle school may be stalled by the Trump Administration, but this week it went ahead and took steps to sign up a general contractor for the project.
The district’s Board of Trustees voted Tuesday, March 28, to authorize Superintendent Tanya Krause to negotiate what is known as a lease-leaseback agreement with Overaa Construction of Richmond, one of the biggest builders of school and college buildings in the Bay Area, to rebuild the district’s aging middle school.
Overaa Construction bid $33.29 million for the project, which involves a new gymnasium, new offices and classrooms, plus renovations and extensive new landscaping.
The long-awaited project had set a late-2018 completion date, but that is now uncertain because one of President Trump’s executive orders has halted all endangered species actions by the U.S. Forest and Wildlife Service.
Scotts Valley schools were in the final stages of approval of a mitigation plan for the endangered Mt. Hermon June Beetle, which lives at the school site.
Krause said Wednesday she has asked Rep. Anna Eshoo to intervene in the issue, but with no results so far.
The leaseback arrangement, under a new state procedure that went into effect in January, allows the district to avoid costly change orders during the construction, by in effect leasing the new consruction from the contractor until it is built, when it gets turned back over to the district, Krause said.
“We are moving forward with a construction contractor as there is preliminary work that can be done prior to the resolution of the Fish and Wildlife issue,” she said.