Decision on new site still to come
The San Marcos CISD board of trustees plans to decide what to do for a central office facility at its regular meeting on Feb. 18.
At a special called meeting on Monday, the board heard a presentation on the options the district is considering and the administration’s recommendation for a new central office. SMCISD communications chief Andrew Fernandez gave the presentation, which focused on the possibility of a new building on district property located at the corner of Hunter Road and Suttles, near other district offices, and the possibility of a new central office on the site of the old central office on LBJ Drive. The administration’s recommendation is to construct a new building on the Suttles site, which has enough space to allow for future growth. The estimated cost of the building on Suttles is $4,439,484, Fernandez said. Based on talks between the district and architects Perkins and Will, he said, the district would have the option to build a central office and make two potential additions in future phases.
The funds for a new central office would come from money the board budgeted to renovate part of Mendez Elementary School to put a central office on that campus. However, after engineers began looking at that project, it became clear that it would not be feasible within the $4.5 million budget the district was working with. The district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Mendez project before abandoning it — a fact that trustees Lupe Costilla and John McGlothlin brought up at Monday’s meeting. Costilla pointed out that with the funds spent on Mendez, the district would need to make up a difference of $200,000 to pay for the proposed new central office. McGlothlin said he wished that before spending that much money on Mendez, “before we spent all that money, we’d get some kind of red flag.”
Assistant Superintendent for Business and Support Services Karen Griffith explained that there were engineers and others involved early on in the project who did work before realizing it would be over budget, and that work will have to be done again with a new site.
“I can’t use the same design,” she said. “Everything’s going to have to be redone.”
The trustees agreed that even though Monday night’s agenda would have allowed them to make a decision on the central office plans, they would prefer to make a decision at a regular meeting that might have a larger audience.
“I’d prefer, if we’re going to spend more than $4 million, it be in a normal meeting, not tacked on,” McGlothlin said.
SMCISD moved out of its decades-old central administration office on LBJ Drive due to mold and other air quality issues. It has been renting space on Mill Street for $12,000 per month — a strategy that Fernandez pointed out is “not ideal.”
