Checking and double checking the estimated cost of building new Pilgrim and Toll Gate High Schools is expected to take longer than initially hoped for.

City Council President Steve McAllister thought an updated analysis of the June cost projections by a third outside party would have been available Wednesday or today. While that may turn out to be the case, Steve Gothberg, Director of Capital & Construction Projects, isn’t prepared to put his stamp of approval on them until he has thoroughly scrutinized them as well as developed a list of items that could be dropped from the plans to ensure that the overall cost of the two schools does not exceed the $350 million bond issue voters approved on Election Day.

Still there is an urgency to gain City Council approval of release of the bond funds for the department to meet the Rhode Island Department of Education’s five-year window to build and open the schools in order for the city to gain a full 52.5 reimbursement of the cost. McAllister initially planned for the council to review release of the school bonds in January. Now it is looking it could be a month later.

“I will definitely wait until we get that updated costs report,” McAllister said in an email. “This report may also have some suggestions of items that may need to be scaled back or eliminated in order to stay under the $350 million amount.”

David Testa, chair of the school building committee, said, “In a perfect world, we'll be able to go before the council in January, February at the latest. The peer review will be done in time for January and as I mentioned previously, the peer review is just due diligence on our original due diligence. Lastly, the review itself is being done by a third party that has no "dog in this fight”.”  Testa remains confident the two schools can be built for $350 million.

Looking to trim cost in the face inflation, McAllister said in his opinion there are items that can’t be dramatically changed or eliminated. He cited new athletic fields, saying they were a huge selling point to voters who approved the bond, “so I already told this working group eliminating a field or dramatically changing them would not be supported by me.”

The working group that McAllister is referencing included him, Testa, Gothberg and the mayor met last week. As McAllister has explained the purpose of the group is to keep open lines of communication so that even the smallest of changes in the project is known to everyone.

McAllister plans to talk with House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi and the Governor about the RIDE 5-year deadline to complete the schools.

“This is a generational project for the City of Warwick and we need to get this right.  We should not have to rush to meet some random deadline created by RIDE,” he said.

Picozzi who will meet with the bond counsel Karen Grande and City Finance Director Peder Schaefer this week said the next step is to finalize plans for the schools before they can be placed out for bid. He projected that cost to be 3 to 5 percent of the $350 million bond.

“I don’t have a spare $17 million,” he said. “This is a big decision.”

He also said Rhode Island Department of Education approval of the plan is critical.