The Clinton County Board of Education has finally selected an architectural company to design and lay out plans for the new Clinton County High School.
During a rare Saturday morning special called meeting held on April 5, the board selected DECO Architects of Somerset for the job.
All board members were present for the approximate 50 minute meeting, which included about a 45 minute closed session at the start to discuss personnel.
Upon returning to open session, a motion was made by board member Vik Soma to employ DECO, with the motion passing by a unanimous vote.
The school board continues to move at a rapid pace in securing funding and putting pieces in place to get the new high school project moving forward.
At a meeting last month, the board selected Codell Construction Management of Winchester, Kentucky, as the construcion management firm for the upcoming project.
The eventual hiring of DECO as the project architect didn’t come lightly, as board members, over a period of at least two weeks, various special meetings and several hours of discussion, reviewed proposals and considerations, finally reaching its conclusion.
Several architectural firms had submitted proposals to the school board on the project, with the board following a point system, narrowing the list down to five finalists–each of which gave presentations and interviewed by the board.
Those presentations and interviews took place over a two-meeting span late last month.
After three other special meetings were initially announced and later cancelled, the last one on Thursday, April 3, due to adverse weather conditions, the board eventually met this past Saturday morning and after more discussion on the proposals, finalized its decision.
All board members were in attendance for all of the special meetings in which discussion and interviews of each construction management and architect firm was conducted.
Superintendent Wayne Ackerman said recently that both the construction management and architect firms are paid on a percentage rate basis set by the state.
The severe weather conditions last Thursday also forced the cancellation of the Local Planning Committee (LPC) Public Forum and meeting. That forum will now be held on Tuesday, April 15, at 6:30 p.m. at the Board of Education with a meeting of the Local Planning Committee to follow.
The next regular meeting of the Board of Education will be Monday, April 21, at 5 p.m. at Clinton County High School.