Northampton to go back for bids for school project this month

The Northampton School Board will put the high school/middle school renovation project back out for bids later this month according to County Administrator Charlie Kolakowski.

Kolakowski informed the Board of Supervisors at Tuesday night’s meeting of the announcement. He said it would likely be a 45 day process, so he expected bids back in August.

When the bids return in August, the School Board and Board of Supervisors will have ample time to discuss and make recommendations.

The initial attempt at getting bids for the project to renovate the school, which is by most accounts in bad shape, were disappointing. In a time of unprecedented stimulus money from the Federal government in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a lot of dollars chasing limited resources, bidding on a project in a rural part and isolated section of Virginia wasn’t attractive to contractors who have the ability to pull off such a job. The County expected 6-10 bids, but only two total were received and the cheapest option came in $30 million dollars higher than expected. 

In the interim, the School Board and Board of Supervisors have been working to attract more bidders to the project and cut expenses.

A special tax on items excluding groceries, medicine and farm equipment to help fund the school project was passed in a November 2020 referendum. The County also had raised somewhere in the ballpark of $42 million in bond sales at a time of lower interest rates and was recently awarded $16.8 million from the Virginia Department of Education for the project.

Supervisor Dixon Leatherbury stated in September of last year the Board “had its arms around” a $60 million price tag on the project.

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