How much "fluff" is there in the Sun Prairie High School Plan?

At the 8/20/07 High School Planning Team meeting, Architect Larry Bray was asked to explain why the pool cost was estimated at $4.5M when plans his firm developed for the Ad Hoc Pool Task Force in July 2006 showed designs ranging from $2.5M to $3.6M.

Mr. Bray's response was " ...we had to add in site costs and materials cost increases. That brought us to about $4.2M. From there, we rounded it to $4.5M."

A quick calculation shows that this rounding results in a "fluff factor" of over 7%. How much fluff is in the $97M school construction plan? A similar 7% , or $7M?

Is this just a slick way that the school board and the district can later come back and want us to kiss their feet because they didn't have to spend all the money that was borrowed? Is this a means of artificially creating a construction slush fund to be used later to cover staffing costs so the board/district can say, "see...we didn't have to go to referendum to exceed the revenue cap???

It is information and statements such as these that are the root of public distrust in the school board and district administration. David Stackhouse may be right....there is no need to a "Community Engagement Task Force"...just stop the shenanigans !