Jackson County superintendent seeks and wins waiver for construction change orders

Chester Shannon, superintendent of the Jackson County School District in Tuckerman, Arkansas, asked the committee to approve a waiver or addendum to a previously approved amount to cover work arising from ongoing construction.

Shannon said he was returning to the committee to request the adjustment while construction is underway, explaining that grants and change orders sometimes blur what counts as maintenance versus construction and that the district had taken advantage of reduced costs to do additional work. "We've had change orders, we've had an opportunity to do some things to our building, while this crew was there at a, much reduced cost," Shannon said. He added, "I also wanna make sure that I'm covered with a waiver from this board." The transcript does not specify the dollar amount of the requested addendum.

Representative Eves, who moved to approve the waiver, apologized to Shannon for requiring him to come back to present the request in person, saying there was no internal process to adjust the previously approved amount without the superintendent returning. "There's there was no process or procedure for us to do it without you coming back down here," Eves said. A motion to approve the waiver request was made and the committee adopted it by voice vote; the chair declared, "Motion, is passed." The record shows only a voice vote; no roll-call tally or specific vote counts are recorded in the transcript.

The chair verbally announced a motion attributed to "Senator Rice" with a second from "Mr. Speaker," but the motion was also moved in the meeting record by Representative Eves. The transcript therefore includes inconsistent attributions for who formally moved and seconded the action. The committee took no further recorded steps in the transcript to specify the scope or dollar amount of the waiver.

After the vote, the committee moved on to other business and later adjourned.