Schools scaling back

School districts throughout Utah are scaling back building-project lists because rising construction costs have eaten up money obtained through bond issuances.

Nebo, Davis and Jordan are among the school districts struggling to stretch money to make good on promises when voters approved tax increases to pay for the new and upgraded schools.

"The landscape had definitely changed between 2002 and today," Davis School District spokesman Chris Williams said.

Officials in Jordan District estimate that construction costs have gone up at least 20 percent in just the past year, putting a kink in their construction plans.

"It seems to me the start of things was when fuel costs went up," said Steve Woods, Jordan's executive director of auxiliary services.

Issues both foreign and domestic are blamed for the increases for labor and materials.

In addition to expected inflation, costs to build started climbing last fall after Hurricane Katrina destroyed a lot of oil-processing capacity around the Gulf of Mexico.

Prices for materials made with oil — PVC pipe, asphalt, roofing materials — went up immediately after the storm. Also, a construction boom in China caused steel costs to go up, and the hot local construction market made the cement powder for concrete hard to come by, according to local school and building officials.

Labor costs have also increased, said Keith Stepan, director of the Utah Division of Facilities Construction and Management, the state government arm that oversees the construction of state buildings.

For Stepan's division, budget estimates increased from last year by 24 percent. "Las Vegas, Phoenix and Salt Lake City are really hot markets," he said. "Construction growth is really high this year."

Richard Thorn, president/CEO of the Utah Chapter of The Associated General Contractors of America, also says the price of land has increased — a problem that Nebo district has encountered since 2004, when the public approved the issuance of $140 million in bonds for new-school construction.

The district promised to build two new high schools, a junior high school and as many elementary schools as it could afford. That has turned out to be six elementary schools, including two that are being rebuilt at current locations.

But property that the Nebo School District hoped to purchase with bond money is off-limits since prices of elementary schools increased from $7.5 million in 2003 to $9.5 million today.

The increase was partly because of a change in design to make the buildings accommodate more students, Superintendent Chris Sorensen said.