SHARON SCHOOLS Cost rises for asbestos removal

Change orders have raised the cost of asbestos removal by nearly 30 percent.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- The cost of removing asbestos from the Sharon Middle/High School has reached nearly $850,000.
The district is spending about $18 million to renovate the 30-year-old building on East State Street, and state law mandates that all asbestos be removed in any major remodeling project.
The Sharon City School Board learned at a workshop Wednesday that the cost of that removal will climb an additional $27,000.
Ken Brandt of Safety Dynamics of Lowellville, Ohio, the district's consultant on asbestos removal, presented two new change orders to the board, one for $15,090 for removal of the material above a wall in the library and a second for $12,728 to remove it from above a plaster ceiling in the old group instruction room.
Greenmoor Inc. of Avella, Pa., is the contractor handling that work and has been on the job since 2000, primarily working during the summer when the building is closed to pupils.
Unforeseen circumstances
The original contract was for $660,000 but it had provisions for change orders to cover circumstances such as where asbestos was found behind walls and, as in Sharon's case, behind lockers where no one expected it might be.
Jim Wolf, district business manager, said previous change orders have totaled more than $153,000 to cover those problems.
The work has already been completed on the latest two, and the school board will be asked to approve them retroactively at its Monday meeting, bringing the total asbestos removal cost to $841,706, Wolf said.
Wolf said the latest change orders had to be completed by July 5 to allow other contractors to get on with their work on the school project. They couldn't be delayed to get board approval first, he said.
The renovation is nearly 90 percent complete and should be finished by mid-November.