Southborough finance subcommittee presses architects after new school estimate keeps town share near $78 million

Members of the Town of Southborough Building Committee Finance Subcommittee spent a meeting reviewing a new schematic estimate for the proposed school project, which shows the town’s share near $77.9 million while the overall project budget is about $110 million.

The subcommittee pressed architects and estimators for line‑by‑line explanations, asked staff to confirm recent changes to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) funding calculation and directed the project team to produce a value‑engineering (VE) list and clarifications before the next full committee meeting and the MSBA submittal deadline.

The discussion matters because the committee must present the full project budget to the public at the April 7 budget meeting and to voters at a May 10 special town meeting; the committee repeatedly said the magnitude of year‑to‑year increases in the town budget will affect residents’ willingness to approve the project. “We are really concerned about going to town meeting on April 7 with a really significant year over year budget increase,” a subcommittee member said during the meeting.

Architects and the project estimator described how the change in the MSBA effective reimbursement rate and some refined takeoffs reduced the town’s required borrowing compared with the project status report (PSR) projection. Jim, a project representative, told the subcommittee that two independent estimates (PM&C as the estimator of record and PCM as Arrowstreet’s estimator) were reconciled in a six‑hour reconciliation meeting and “we got to within .045% of each other,” and that the reconciled total is the number to be submitted to the MSBA. He said the team must finalize the 30‑11 estimate and notify the MSBA…