City pushes for governor to approve design-build bill for city schools

The city is nudging Gov. Andrew Cuomo to take action on a bill that would streamline construction for city schools — a process the School Construction Authority argues will allow it to build and renovate facilities faster and at a cheaper cost.

In June, the state Legislature passed legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Ed Braunstein and State Sen. Leroy Comrie, that would expand “design-build” authority — a process that shortens the timeframe for capital improvements by allowing design and construction to occur at the same time — to a number of city agencies.

“It gets projects done cheaper and more quickly,” Braunstein told POLITICO. “And we passed the legislation at the end of this session and we’re just hopeful that the governor is gonna sign it.”

He said the chances of Cuomo signing the bill are “good,” adding he hasn’t heard any opposition to the legislation.

“If we can free up millions of dollars on a project, we can use that money somewhere else and when you’re talking about adding school seats, that makes a difference,” Braunstein said.

In a statement to POLITICO, the governor’s office said it was reviewing the legislation but offered no timeframe for when the bill would cross Cuomo’s desk.

“It’s one of more than 900 bills passed by the Legislature at the end of session,” Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement. “It hasn’t been delivered to us yet but remains under review by Counsel’s Office.”

The School Construction Authority’s 2020-2024 five-year capital plan includes $8 billion for nearly 58,000 new seats to reduce overcrowding in schools and $750 million to make 50 percent of elementary school buildings partially or fully accessible and one-third of all buildings fully accessible. It also commits $566 million in support of “3K for All” and “Pre-K for All” initiatives and $284 million for electrical work to provide air conditioning in all classrooms by 2021.

SCA said recent school expansions and completions that could have been expedited by design-build include the newly opened P.S. 398 as well as P.S. 303, P.S. 66 and P.S. 144 in Queens; P.S. 101 in Brooklyn and P.S. 46 in the Bronx.

SCA also said design-build would help fast-track projects like the city’s plan to add 1,000 new public school seats on Staten Island at the former St. John Villa Academy campus. SCA is working with DOE to identify what will go in that space, spokesperson Kevin Ortiz said, noting that it will be a combination of elementary schools and intermediate schools.

“It would cut the cost of projects of this nature by at least 6 percent at a minimum and that obviously is something that would benefit the SCA,” Ortiz said. “We’re working to meet increasing seat demand and obviously keep our existing facilities in a state of good repair. So it’s imperative that we’re able to utilize design-build in that process moving forward.”

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. — a likely 2021 mayoral candidate — recently unveiled a report calling for reform of SCA, including eliminating the use of trailers as classroom space and a study of available and potentially necessary classroom space as part of the city’s land use review process that takes place during rezonings.

Diaz Jr. called design-build “important,” arguing it has worked at the state level for bridges, referring to the Mario Cuomo Bridge as an example. He said it can be accomplished in a way that simultaneously protects the process from corruption and yields better schools and classrooms.

“The status quo has been where we’ve seen scaffolding around schools for many, many years or whenever we tell our communities, ‘Oh, we’re gonna enhance this building or build a new school’ — by the time we do that, a child who’s in the first grade will end up seeing the end result [when] they’re a freshman or sophomore in college,” he said.

Ortiz told POLITICO the construction authority welcomes Diaz Jr.’s report but maintained they are already performing all of the recommendations he laid out.

Maria Doulis, vice president of strategy, operation and communications at the Citizens Budget Commission, told said the use of design-build is commonplace across the country.

She noted the city schools’ capital program is enormous and argued “even achieving very minor savings” still adds up to a lot of dollars for New Yorkers — benefiting children who would be in “improved, modern spaces quicker.”

“It’s not a panacea and it’s not an approach that works in every case but certainly there shouldn’t be any restrictions to use it as appropriate and necessary,” Doulis said. “This allows a lot of the work to happen concurrently.”

In 2011, during his first term, Cuomo pushed for state agencies to get design-build authority, Doulis said. Organized labor voiced opposition fearing a loss of public sector employment. Some building trade groups opposed combining functions and construction unions expressed concern about the over-reliance on non-unionized labor that design-build can foster.

The unions negotiated a project labor agreement (PLA) under which a public entity such as SCA agrees with unions on a scope of work and some parameters for that work as well as the workforce. That ended up going in the final package that is currently awaiting the governor’s signature. Some design-build proponents believe PLA will chew into savings.

“We still think it’s a net plus at CBC… the benefits are so strong that we’ll still come out ahead,” Doulis added.

Carlos Scissura, head of the New York Building Congress — a trade group that advocates for the construction industry — said granting design-build has been one of the group’s top legislative priorities.

“I think the city and we’ve been involved with it for a couple of years now have been pushing the governor and the state to allow design-build as an option for New York City and I think the good thing is the bill was passed,” Scissura said. “We’re expecting the governor to [sign it].”