The Financial Subcommittee met for twelve minutes on March 13. The numbers they reviewed tell a longer story.
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The Farmington High School Building Committee's Financial Subcommittee convened at 9:04 a.m. on March 13, 2026, approved two sets of prior minutes, walked through change orders on both the high school and central office projects, reviewed a contingency log, and discussed a change order analysis that identified more than $1 million in costs attributable to errors and omissions in the original drawings and specifications. The meeting adjourned at 9:16 a.m.
The Change Orders
The high school invoice package carried twelve change orders. The largest was $25,122 for library garden fencing — the second installment of a previously approved restoration after the temporary parking lot required the garden's removal. The rest were trade allowance reconciliations: credits came back for demolition and abatement ($15,000), masonry ($3,500), a storage closet CMU wall ($747), another round of demo and abatement ($3,000), and electrical and low-voltage work ($9,760.25). This is closeout-phase accounting — the line-by-line reconciliation that happens when a project of this scale starts tying up loose ends.
Central office had its own package: an invoice from Arcadis for $1,235 and four change orders, including $3,570 for a fire alarm interface at the elevator and credits for electrical work ($223), aluminum entrances and storefronts ($1,900), and a net-zero demo and abatement closeout. The commissioning agent for central office still has $20,520 remaining on a $45,950 contract, so more invoices are expected.
All items were approved without objection.
The Contingency
The remaining owner's contingency for the high school project stands at $985,857, according to the meeting transcript. That number has been climbing incrementally as trade allowance credits flow back in — which is the intended direction.
One significant item remains unresolved: a structural change order related to issues identified within the high school building itself. The original figure set aside was $1.6 million. The subcommittee indicated the final number is expected to come in lower, based on discussions at the most recent full building committee meeting, but the exact figure has not been settled.
That is a non-trivial open question on a project that has already generated scrutiny over its scope and final costs.
The Errors and Omissions
This is where the meeting earns its story.
The subcommittee reviewed a change order analysis that broke down every change order by type — owner-initiated, construction manager, and other — and then isolated those attributable to errors and omissions in the original drawings or specifications.
Of 249 change orders on the Farmington High School side of the project, 52 were designated as errors or omissions. That is 21 percent. The dollar value of those 52 change orders exceeds $1 million, against a total FHS change order value of $4.3 million.
Central office told a sharper version of the same story: of 33 change orders, 12 were errors and omissions — 36.4 percent. The financial impact was $122,000 out of $245,000 in total change orders.
Across both projects, roughly 80 percent of change orders were owner-initiated, 19 percent came from the construction manager, and 1 percent fell into the "other" category. The total: 282 change orders valued at $4.6 million.
A subcommittee member stated the reason this analysis exists: the town's bonds do not cover errors and omissions. Those costs come out of Farmington's pocket. The subcommittee began tracking these figures specifically because of that concern — the money spent correcting mistakes in the plans is money the town absorbs, not the bonding.
The analysis slides were partially updated from the prior meeting's version. A complete combined breakdown was noted as a follow-up item.
What Comes Next
The subcommittee will schedule an April meeting via poll. The structural change order remains the largest open financial question, and the commissioning agent has roughly $20,000 in outstanding work.
The meeting lasted twelve minutes. The math will take longer.
— Jack Beckett has now read change order analyses for two different Farmington municipal projects in a single week and is beginning to suspect this is what he does for a living. The coffee is holding. The spreadsheets are not getting shorter. ☕
The Farmington Mercury covers the meetings you skip — the 9 a.m. financial subcommittees, the 47-page contingency logs, the pie charts that explain where your tax dollars went when the drawings were wrong. We publish slowly, deliberately, and with the full transcript in front of us. Our motto is "Always last to breaking news" and our change order accuracy rate is considerably better than 79 percent. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors what they're missing. #WeAreFarmington 📰