An ongoing dispute over a newly constructed Montgomery County school has contributed to $546,085 in legal fees spent by the school system in the first half of the fiscal year, up 13 percent from $484,521 over the same time period last year.
The amount paid to outside counsel, for matters from personnel complaints to construction disputes, does not include $495,636 spent on legal services for special education clashes.
“In a perfect world money would be spent on the primary mission of government agencies, but we don’t live in a perfect world,” said Steve Abrams, a school board member with a background in construction law.
“We engage in things beyond education — construction happens to be one,” Abrams said, adding the school district, with a six-year capital budget close to $1 billion, is one of the largest construction enterprises in the county.
In the year and a half since Silver Spring’s Roscoe Nix Elementary School opened, contract arguments surrounding its construction have swelled legal fees for the case beyond $200,000, with time-intensive — and expensive — litigation expected to proceed this summer.
Court documents filed in November 2006 accused McKissack and McKissack, a D.C.-based architecture and engineering firm, of nearly $8 million in cost overruns, designs out of compliance with state and local code, and delays resulting in forced overtime.
Total construction costs for the school, now in its second year of operation, exceeded $20 million and because of design flaws will require more money for upkeep, the complaint said. In all, the district demanded a $10 million settlement plus interest and fees.
In its defense, lawyers for the architects said a variety of factors contributed to increased costs, particularly design changes requested by the schools.
