Lack of transparency and poor communication about construction costs resulted in board members and constituents in the Francis Howell (Missouri) District being blindsided by overruns of some $78 million for the new Francis Howell North High in St. Charles.
Those are the findings of a report from Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, who gave the Francis Howell district the lowest possible rating of "poor" and identified several questionable actions involving construction of the high school.
The high school, which opened earlier this year, was projected to cost $86 million when voters were asked in 2020 to approve a bond proposal. In November 2021, administrators informed the board that the cost of building the school had mushroomed to $164 million.
"What we found was a lack of transparency, a failure to communicate, and a flawed project manager selection process that led to the Board of Education and taxpayers being shocked when the actual cost of the new school was revealed," Fitzpatrick said. "Because of these cost overruns, 71 originally planned projects, totaling more than $56 million, for schools across the district will not be completed.
"This lack of transparency violated the trust of the people and created serious doubts about the district's ability to manage projects of this scale in the future."
The audit notes that marketing materials for the 2022 bond proposal estimated the cost of the new school at $86.35 million "even though no one associated with the project can explain the origin of this estimate," the auditor's office says.
Estimated costs for the project had risen over the $100 million mark by February 2021, but the new estimates were not presented to the school board until November 2021, when a revised estimate of $164.7 million was provided.
"The district and its construction manager attributed the higher than expected price to insufficient original estimates that did not take into account annual inflationary increases, increased square footage and project scope, and the unprecedented materials cost increases associated with the Covid-19 pandemic," the auditor's office says.
The audit also placed blame on the school board for failing to make sure it was receiving timely updates on projects, which led to "decisions with insufficient knowledge or understanding of their financial impact."
One member of the school board was on the design teams for the bond projects and was aware of the increased cost estimates but did not provide that information to the rest of the board, the audit found.
The audit also questioned the propriety of Francis Howell's competitive bidding process for the high school project.
"District officials' insistence that project management firms hire a former district employee as the project manager improperly limited the eligible candidates," the audit says. "The added requirement prevented the highest-ranked firm from being chosen and resulted in the board selecting a firm that district officials had previously determined to be inferior. The former employee worked for this firm and the firm was owned by his brother."
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that district records from January 2020 show the board approved Atlas Building Group to handle planning for bond projects on an interim basis from February 2020 to June 2020. Jeremy Boettler, Francis Howell's director of facilities and operations from July 2015 to August 2018, started working as a project manager at Atlas Building Group a month after he left the district. His brother, Brian Boettler, owns Atlas Building Group, state filings show.
