By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

At the Hays USD 489 Board of Education meeting Monday night, the board unanimously rejected the sole bid for HVAC systems for Hays Middle School due to the bid coming in significantly higher than budgeted.

The district will now seek new bids with more open standards in order to find a bid that comes in under budget. The received bid totaled $1.74 million, however, the district only budgeted $1.3 million for the project.

Even with a bond issue election expected in the spring, the project needs to begin soon in order to be completed over the summer.

“Every building, every day, we are doing something with HVAC,” said Rusty Lindsay, director of buildings and grounds, during the Oct. 5 meeting in which the board approved the bidding process to begin.

With the bid coming in at $493,000 over budget, Lindsay proposed rejecting the bid and immediately rebidding the project with a broader scope of requirements.

“We can’t fund it. There is no way,” he said.

Broadening the scope of the requirements might lower the cost during the next bidding process as other manufactures produce different control systems, according to Lindsay, but the outcome would still allow for an off-site, online-based interface.

The new system, however, might not be compatible with the existing control systems, meaning two interfaces would be used to control the entire facility.

The system upgrade was requested as a cost-cutting measure as the current system is almost 20 years past its expected lifespan and replacing the old system would be cost prohibitive, especially if the original insulation – likely asbestos – were to be removed from the building.

The new system is also expected to add cooling to the facility’s gym and locker room, but with higher efficiency systems, the cost for expanding cooling would be offset by savings.