St. Paul Public Schools vastly underestimated the cost of an ambitious 2016 plan to improve the look and function of every building it owns.

Eight major school projects that got underway last year will cost the district a total of $214 million, according to the latest figures from the school district.

That’s $63 million more than the district estimated in 2016, a Pioneer Press analysis has found, a difference of 42 percent.

New estimates for the next eight large projects, all scheduled to break ground in the coming five years, total $220 million. That’s $91 million, or 70 percent, higher than the 2016 estimate.

Many smaller facilities projects also will cost far more than first hoped, a comparison of the two plans shows.

The high costs have forced the school district to postpone construction at several schools in order to minimize the impact on taxpayers.

“We had a learning curve, just in terms going from a $26 million a year contracting arm to a $110 million or so contracting arm,” facilities director Tom Parent said in an interview.

“Some of our historic models for doing some of that cost estimating didn’t scale appropriately.”

The district in 2014 began working with planning teams from each school to draw up conceptual plans to improve their buildings.

Officials refined and prioritized those ideas into an inaugural five-year facilities master plan, which the school board adopted in 2016. The board on Tuesday passed the third iteration of the annual plan.

Over the past year, school board member John Brodrick has peppered Parent with questions about so-called “change orders” — smaller cost increases to projects after bids have been awarded.

But Brodrick said in an interview Tuesday that he was not aware of the bigger picture — that construction costs have far exceeded early estimates.

“What you’re asking is pretty important stuff,” he said. “I was not completely aware of all this.”

Parent said the 2016 estimates were made by district staff with help from a local construction firm.

“We found some flaws in our process that from 2016 to 2017 we corrected,” he said.

Parent said the 2016 plan did not build inflation into its estimates. The cost of materials is rising too, he said.

“Tariffs are going to have a really significant impact on our construction costs if things stay as they are today,” he said.

The district has found “surprises” at some schools, such as poor soil at St. Anthony Park Elementary and faulty plumbing and mechanical systems at numerous schools.

Angry neighbors have driven up costs, too.

At the lower campus of Linwood-Monroe Arts Plus, the district redrew plans to the tune of millions of dollars to fend off a zoning challenge before the St. Paul City Council.

Plans at Como Park Senior High, which included a new front entrance, changed significantly from what the school team first drew up in 2015.

“The commitment we made to our school communities was … when this gets funding attached to it, we’re going to keep working with you and we’re going to refine this,” Parent said.

“This is our step at the plate for a lot of these buildings to make sure that when we walk out of there, they are the right learning spaces for kids and will be for another 70, 90 years.”

TAX IMPACT

When the district adopted the facilities plan in 2016, officials said they would gradually raise property taxes to pay for it. Their target is a series of $30 increases each year for the average home, worth $151,500.

Chief financial officer Marie Schrul said they’ve stuck to that target despite the construction cost increases.

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Sept. 30 is last day for public comment on Pigs Eye Lake makeover “I want to honor our commitment to taxpayers,” she said.

It helped that a $70 million East Side middle school was not built last year, after all. That project was scrapped because the district instead paid $15.3 million for the recently shuttered Crosswinds school in Woodbury, which will reopen as a St. Paul district middle school next fall after another $3.2 million in updates.

“It was a really good value purchase for us,” Parent said.

Although the district borrowed from its general fund to buy Crosswinds, the construction budget is separate from the general fund. That means construction costs have had little impact on recent shortfalls in the general fund, which pays mainly for teacher salaries and benefits.

The two funds are related, however, in terms of the impact on St. Paul property owners. Rising property taxes from the construction spree could hurt the district’s chances of persuading voters to approve an $18.6 million annual revenue increase for the general fund Nov. 6.

High construction costs and a desire to minimize the impact on taxpayers, among other factors, have moved the district to delay eight major projects since 2016:

As a result, the district’s latest schedule calls for no major groundbreakings until 2020, when American Indian Magnet has a $38.5 million addition and renovation planned; its initial estimate was $23.1 million.

That same year, they’ll start work on Frost Lake and Bruce Vento elementary schools. The total estimated cost for those renovations has grown to $50.6 million — $20 million more than expected two years ago.