Mike Smith
From “Laugh-In”: “Ve-r-r-r-y inter-r-r-r-e-s-s-s-s-t-i-n-g.”
One of the first items on the agenda of last Thursday’s meeting of the McHenry County College Board was a resolution to begin work on the addition for new hard science labs, improvement of health sciences space, student entertainment space and a Veterans support facility.
During discussion of the agenda’s approval, Board President Mike Smith stated that the architect item would be pulled and tabled for the night.
Here is the proposal that was postponed:
Architectural Design Services Information
At the February 25, 2016 Board Meeting, the Board approved moving forward on the initial stages of design work as presented by Demonica Kemper Architects, Chicago, IL (DKA).
The initial scope of work is to provide design.
The administration will negotiate the scope of work to be completed and will incorporate language into the Architectural Design Services contract to ensure that the design work is correlated with the feasibility of the project and respective timelines.
Therefore, the scope of work to be done by DKA will be completed in stages with progressive billing for work completed to date in the event that the project is postponed or canceled.
As the process continues the costs will be defined more precisely with the expectation of reducing the overall cost of the project.
The scope of the design services is expected to be covered in stages based on the success of the project and will consist of the following major components:
Design Services Scope of Work:
- New Science/Student Engagement Space
- Renovation of Building A for Health Sciences
- Renovation for the backfill of vacated Labs in Building E
Recommendation
It is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the contract for Architectural Design Services with Demonica Kemper Architects, Chicago, IL.
The contract for Architectural Design Services will be for services up to $1,981,972 with a total commitment through December 31, 2016, not to exceed $1,375,241 with progressive milestones to ensure continued costs can be stopped if the project is placed on hold.
Clinton Gabbard
President
Here’s the answer to the mystery:
MCC’s big plan was to convince donors to cough up half the money.
But the first donor they visited told them no because the board and the administration hadn’t done their homework in proving this specific project was the best and cheapest solution to MCC’s needs.
That’s understandable.
The plan increases the number of science labs by 25% (from eight to ten) even though MCC uses the existing labs 29 hours per week and the RECOMMENDED national standard is 28 hours.
The plan also increases the number of health labs by 50%, from four to six.
If MCC added just one lab, they’d be within one hour of the RECOMMENDED national standard.
They like to call it a “Lab Project” but bundled with it is a large amount of room called “student engagement” space.
You know — couches and foosball tables and big screen TVs.
Not exactly science labs and not exactly the highest priority at the college, but calling it the “Student Hang-Out Project” instead of the “Science Lab Project” would have been bad PR.
There’s also a modest amount of space for veterans.
Why MCC wants to make our veterans wait three or four years for NEW space is beyond me.
MCC’s classrooms are used, on average, for something like 50% of each school day.
MCC could easily dedicate a classroom or two — or some other space — for the veterans’ use RIGHT NOW!
In short, they could cut the amount of new space by about 90% by cutting the new labs from four to one (and they could probably use existing excess classrooms for that), getting rid of the foosball tables, and dedicating one or two existing classrooms (or other space) to our veterans NOW instead of asking them to wait three or four years for new space.
A smaller, cheaper, faster option was never seriously considered because the so-called “space needs” study became a wish list by department heads with no regard for trends in enrollment (down) and that happened because the committee that “managed” the study was run by the board liberals.
Thank you, Mike Smith, for being the deciding vote on who would be on that committee and the deciding vote in pushing this project as far as it has gone.
We really needed to waste more money on consultants to reach pre-ordained conclusions.
I guess we, the voters, have to get busy again and try to kill yet another massive bond project at MCC.
It seems like they sprout every spring.
How can they even put this on the agenda before they have the donor funding?
Phen, I believe what you’re asking is,
And I think you’ve answered your own question.
I’m a Vet that went to MCC some years ago.
We Vet’s then didn’t need special consideration of a separate space, so why do they now?
As a Vet I see action taken in our behave that isn’t really need.
Some times it seems like we are the new welfare class, serve some time and all the rest of your life is taken care of seems to be the trend, even if you had a non combat JOB which 90% had.