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By Charlotte Underwood
JACKSBORO, TN (WLAF)- On Monday evening, Campbell County Board of Education members approved for Director of Schools Jennifer Fields to request a meeting with the architect Lewis Group and the general contractor GCE to try to work out a new contract and completion date on the Jacksboro Elementary School Gym project which has faced setbacks, damage and delays.
At Monday’s meeting, board members heard lengthy comments from BOE Attorney Dale Cantrell, who advised them on current action needed for the problems and delays at the Jacksboro Gym project.
His suggestion was to have the Director of Schools, along with the County Finance Director Eric Pearson, sit down with the General Contractor and the Architect to work out these new details and hash out a new contract.
At the October 20th meeting, Cantrell had made the suggestion to have the director of schools make a referral to District Attorney Jared Effler and for the county finance director to make a referral to the state comptroller, with both referrals requesting an investigation and audit into the matter because the school board itself is “not an investigatory body.”
This investigation is needed due to a “he-said-she-said situation” between the contractor and the architectural company as to who is at fault for damages and delays to the project”, according to Cantrell.
“You are kind of at a precipice; you all voted at the last meeting to make a referral to the Campbell County District Attorney’s office and to the state comptroller’s office, because they have investigatory power. Your director of finance has made a referral to the comptroller’s office pursuant to your instructions, and your director of schools has made a referral to the attorney general’s office, so that has been done,” Cantrell said.
The board had also voted to have an independent structural evaluation done by Corum Engineering, that has been completed, but the results are not in yet.
According to Director Fields, the invoice for that structural evaluation has been sent over to finance and after it is paid, the report will be released.
According to Cantrell, Corum went out for two days and did their structural evaluation and as soon as the report comes in, it will be forwarded to the BOE.
“While all that was going on, the architectural companies, through their attorneys, have reached out to the board and asked for permission to also do an independent assessment. The reason was, as you recall, it relates to the damage that was done to the interior of the building, in particular the floor. There had been allegations that a mop bucket had caused this catastrophic amount of damage. That kind of has gone by the wayside and now the general contractor has indicated that it was a design issue that would have fallen over to the architect companies. Once that was brought to everyone’s attention, the attorneys for the architect firm reached out to us and they asked for the ability to do an independent inspection as well, since now there has been a finger pointed at them, as it relates just to the water intrusion. The state insurance has denied the school district’s claim for that damage.” Cantrell said. According to him, both entities, the contractor and the architect have done their independent inspections.
“We do not have the results of either of their independent inspections, other than the general contractor believes it was a design flaw… So right now, the inspection status of what has been done as far as the damage status to the inside of the building has all been completed, so you are going to have reports from Corum, and I anticipate having a report from the architectural firm and the construction firm. At that point you will have to decide what, if any action, you are going to take to address the correction that has been done to the damage that has been done to the interior floor,” Cantrell said, adding that he would be coming back to the board as early as next week’s meeting or by the December meeting to see how the board wanted to handle that issue and whether or not he would need to proceed with legal action against one of the two entities.
He said this was a separate issue from the completion of the project, which needed to be handled differently.
Cantrell said he had requested the director of schools ask for a cost estimate of what it’s going to take to finish the project in its current condition and the estimated time that it is going to take.
“The completion time has already lapsed, and you are in the liquidated damages provision so every day that goes on, the general contractor owes you $500 per day on the existing contract. The finance director has spoken with me and said it is BOE’s decision whether to do a stop work issuance on the project as it relates to lack of funding… the project is not close to being completed and it’s not feasible that the project is going to come in near the cost of what you all have budgeted for. It would be naive to assume that there’s not going to have to be a request made to your funding entity, which in this situation, would be the county commission, to ask for additional funding to complete this project. Now, there are trade-offs, the reason I want to address this publicly is because you are all going to get hit by your constituents on some of these questions and it just needs to be transparent with the community. It is very difficult, in mid-project to substitute a general contractor because they are going to have to come in and correct someone else’s mess – having been in the construction business and the construction litigation business for 40 years, it is always more expensive when you change mid project,” Cantrell said.
He also said his anticipation was that the general contractor would come to the school board with a proposal asking to stop the liquidated damages provision “because it’s unrealistic for them to have a project that may not be completed until this time next year, at $500 dollars a day, now we’re talking about a significant amount of money.”
“So, they may want to say, look, why don’t you all waive the $500 a day liquidated damages provision, and we will finish the project at our pace and our schedule and try to get you as close to your budget as possible, that could be one potential proposal that I could see the general contractor making and you are trading off, getting the project completed at the time frame the general contractor wants to work within as opposed as your designated time frame , but the positive is you are not going to have to find as much additional funding,” Cantrell said.
He then moved on to discussing architectural issues, which he said were a little more complicated.
“If, in fact, it comes out there is a design flaw that was not anticipated or is not readily correctable, or that has caused the extension, you would have the ability to bring independent action against the architectural firm for the cost of those damages and then use that to offset the cost of your building, we simply to do not have enough information to be able to ascertain who is at fault at this time,” Cantrell said. He added that he did not anticipate the school board would get investigation results back from the comptroller till summer.
“Those are not fast moving investigations and Geneal Effler will probably hold off doing much until he gets the report of the state comptroller … it is just a slow process, and you all don’t have the luxury of letting an empty gym stay at one of your schools with no work being done and no use for the facility, so it puts you in a very uncomfortable position where you will either have to wait it out until the state tells you as far as the investigative efforts, who is at fault, if anyone, and how are you going to negotiate yourselves out of the situation without doing work stoppage, changing builders mid-stream or appropriating money,” Cantrell said.
“My patience is growing thin; these kids need their gym…we are trying to get a solution, we expected more, I will do everything I can to hold their feet to the fire,” said Board Chairman Jeffrey Miller.
Cantrell also explained that “No action is action.”
“They are currently in breach of contract and the money is going to run out. You are going to have to take some uncomfortable action…Because they are continuing to work until they receive word from you and the money will run out and then you cannot issue money you that you don’t have and create a lien that can’t be enforced by a public entity. You cannot play the waiting game, and you will have to take some action before the state investigation results or they are just going to unilaterally stop work and sue you, because they are continuing to work until they receive instruction from you otherwise,” Cantrell said.
Board member Randy Heatherly said the last completion time date he had heard from the contractor was for February and that he didn’t think it could be completed by that time.
“You are getting two different timelines, you are getting a contractor saying this is how long it’s going to take, and this is the cost and then you are getting your architect and project manager saying it should be quicker and cost less … ” Cantell said. He asked Director Fields what the projected completion date was.
“In the meetings we have had, the original completion date was July 23rd, 2025, then it was revised, they asked for 10 more days, so we moved it up to August 2nd. They asked for seven more days, and we moved it up to August 9th, then they asked for 30 more days, and we moved it to September 8th. Then it was extended to October 20, 2025, then, two three meetings ago, it was extended to January 2026 … GCE is saying January 2026,” Fields said.
Cantrell asked what the architect was saying on the timeline.
“Given the time of year that it is, winter and the type of weather we are going to have, they did not think it would be possible to have it completed by January 2026, we are in November right now,” Fields said.
“You see the dilemma, your project manager and your architect are hired as your eyes and ears on the jobsite to verify what the estimates that are given from the general contactor are. I’ve never – knock on wood – been in a governmental situation where I have had this big of a divergence between the architect and the project manager and the general contractor…you work on tight margins when you get into a governmental contract with a public entity because of funding issues,” Cantrell said, adding that he was at a loss to tell the board how to proceed because he didn’t “know who is telling the truth.”
BOE member Brandon Johnson asked about speeding up the investigation by the comptroller and calling Jason Mumpower. He also suggested reaching out to Senator Ken Yager and Representative Dennis Powers to expedite it to comptroller Jason Mumpower so the “board could have some answers.”
Cantrell said he didn’t want the board to get sued by the general contractor and the architect if the money ran out before the board made some decision on action to take. He asked how much money was left.
Finance Director Eric Pearson said for the architect, the original funding was $163,590 and that expenditures to date had been $140,000, so there’s a balance of $22,837.60 left, essentially, we have spent 86-percent of that budget.
“For the construction, the budget was $2,490,000, expenditures have been about $802,000, so there’s $1,687,360.50 left, leaving 67.8 percent of that budget left,” Pearson said. He also said he could not answer if that amount of money left on the construction budget would finish the project and as for “how long it will go”, “It will go until we get a pay application from the contractor that exhausts that,” Pearson said.
“And that’s what we can’t wait on,” Cantrell responded.
He told the board they needed to “be proactive” and “enter into some sort of re-negotiation with the general contractor for a new contract, “one that sets forth a concrete completion date.”
“The $500 a day liquid damages is roughly $10,000 to $15,000 a month that they are owing and you don’t want to get in a situation where that accrues where it’s $100,000 and we’re going to take that off the back end of the contract, that’s just bad business management. I think it would be more proactive to enter into a new contract with the general contractor … that sets forth a concrete completion date and gives an adjustment on the construction price to offset what we know is going to be the retainage and let the architect approve the course and scope projection of that new job,” Cantrell advised. He said this was a scenario that would be best for all parties, but he didn’t know if it could be accomplished.
“That is between your finance director, your director and your general contractor, I am less concerned about your architect because at this stage we are really just paying them for project management,” Cantrell said.
Miller asked Cantrell if the board could vote to have him draw up that contract.
“It is not that simple, the first thing you need to do is have the director, the finance director, the architect and the general contractor in a room and come up with, what you believe to be a realistic completion date that all three entities can agree on … at that time, I would also say this is how much money we have, this is all we are going to put into the new contract, the $1.6 that we have, which should be in line with what the existing contract is,” Cantrell said. He said this would be the best course of action for all involved with no real penalty to the contractor, the architect, or the taxpayer and that the board would have a real idea of when the project would be completed.
Board Chairman Miller made that motion to ask the “director to try to set that meeting up with the fiancé director Eric Pearson, the General Contractor Mr. Gaylor and architect Mr. Thomas with Lewis Group.” This motion was unanimously approved. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-11/05/2025-6AM)