PUSD board agrees to spend up to $1.4 million annually on energy conservation projects

By Emily Sorensen

A contract that had its approval delayed due to controversy was approved by the Poway Unified School District board at a special meeting Monday.

The contract was approved in a 4-1 vote, with board member Kimberley Beatty voting nay on the issue.

The contract is for energy conservation projects to be performed in the district under Proposition 39, the California Clean Energy Jobs Act. The district has been allocated $1.4 million per year for the next five years from the state under the voter-approved measure for energy conservation projects.

These projects can range from changing out light bulbs to LED lights to finding and implementing new energy-efficient ways to power, heat and cool district schools and buildings.

After reviewing submitted proposals and conducting in-person interviews, district staff selected Barnhart-Reese Construction, Inc., to be awarded the contract for the Proposition 39-related projects.

The contract was initially due to be approved at the May 19 board meeting, but the action was tabled after Frank Shadpour of Shadpour Consulting Engineers, Inc., one of three competing companies for the contract, spoke at the May meeting.

Shadpour said that he found it “absurd” that the district had selected a contractor with no experience in engineering, and that the district had an ethical responsibility to look into the matter.

Doug Barnhart, of Barnhart-Reese Construction, Inc., spoke at Monday night’s special board meeting to answer questions about his company.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” said Barnhart. “I thought my engineering degree mattered, and that my consultants’ engineering degrees mattered, but I guess you learn something new everyday.”

While Shadpour’s objection had been that Barnhart’s company did not have all the required components under one roof, the district had decided that Barnhart assembling a team of top consultants for the project didn’t violate the requirements of the Request for Proposals (RFP) to win the contract.

“The RFP is a construction job, because you are going to have to hire people,” said Barnhart. “Barnhart-Reese is an excellent construction manager in that regard. It’s extremely rare that you’ll find all the components in one house without consultants.”

Malliga Tholandi, the associate superintendent for Business Support Services, said Monday night that Barnhart-Reese was selected because it scored the highest on the RFP and in the interview out of the three companies competing for the contract. After receiving a letter of complaint from Shadpour’s attorney in early May, Tholandi said Monday night that the district set out to make sure everything was ethical and legal.

“Our district attorney advised us to make sure nothing unethical happened,” said Tholandi. “I’m 100 percent sure everything happened in the proper way.”

Michael Tarantino, director of Facilities for PUSD, also spoke Monday night, saying the consultants that will be working for Barnhart-Reese are all experienced in the business and two of them, Johnson Engineering and KS Engineers, had both worked for the district for over a decade each.

When asked by Beatty about the RFP asking for “a firm,” and not consultants, Tarantino said the RFP didn’t say that the winning company couldn’t find outside firms to do the work. “They recruited the best people for this project,” said Tarantino.

Tarantino also said the submitted cost for Barnhart-Reese to hire consultants wasn’t any more expensive than the two other in-house companies in their RFPs. “All the hourly rates were very similar,” said Tarantino.

Beatty said that it seemed like “an overload of consultants” and that she feared the result would be costly and inefficient. Tarantino said the district will have the opportunity to discuss any potential double charging or the necessity of personnel in the future, but not until they reach a later point in the project, when they know what is necessary.

Barnhart said the team he has assembled has also been selected to work on San Diego Community College, and that if PUSD has made a mistake hiring his company, then so has San Diego Community College. “I take strong exception to anyone who says I don’t know how to do energy-efficient projects,” said Barnhart. “My goal isn’t to make money [from this contract]. I have plenty of money. It’s to make [the district] successful in it’s Proposition 39 project, so it can put more money into education than into electric bills.”

The district also discussed:

• First readings of the 2013-14 budget, the Local Control Accountability Plan, the breakdown of the plan for spending the $7 million allocated to the district for implementation of Common Core State Standards and new Common-Core textbooks for sixth- and seventh-grade math. All of these items will return for a second reading or a vote at the June 23 regular board meeting.

• The district also approved the refinancing of Special Tax Revenue Bonds for Improvement Areas B and C. This refinancing will save the district $2.9 million over a period of 21 years, or between $100,000 and $125,000 a year.

The next school board meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Monday, June 23 at the district office, 15250 Avenue of Science in Carmel Mountain Ranch.