Features

Peralta Community College Trustees will consider the growing cost of building the new Vista College this week 

The meeting will be held on Tuesday, 7 p.m., at the Peralta Administration Building, 333 East Eighth St. in Oakland. 

Two construction cost overrun items that were postponed three weeks ago while Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris gathered more information are back on the agenda this week as consent items, this time with the chancellor’s recommendation of approval. 

At the board’s May 24 meeting, Peralta Director of General Services Sadiq Ikharo had asked for the approval of $176,000 in additional fees for Vista designers Ratcliff Architects and another $252,000 in additional fees for HP Inspections for steel-testing services. 

After a representative of the Vista construction manager told trustees at the May meeting that some of the HP Inspections work had been done as early as last December, Harris said that he’d only been informed of the overrun requests the week before, and told Swinerton senior project manager Michael Raven to “tell me who was supposed to contact me, and we’ll hang him in the morning.” 

Last January, after hearing repeated requests for more money for the $65 million Vista construction project, trustees passed a new policy mandating increased board oversight for requests.