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Wlaf1450‘My job is to get to the truth, provide this documentation as the backup’- architect Jake Thomas
By Charlotte Underwood
JACKSBORO, TN (WLAF)- Disagreements and discussion continue to plague the Jacksboro Elementary School Gym project, with the Board of Education members hearing once again from the project’s architect Jake Thomas with Lewis Group and project contractor representative Emily Gaylor with GCE at Tuesday’s meeting. It was on the agenda to discuss and take any action on proposed change order number 10 and on a pay order 9 on the project. This change order was requesting more days be added to the project. After about a 45-minute discussion, as well as hearing from both sides, the board voted not to approve the change order granting the additional days and also voted not to approve the pay order of $150,000. Both of these decisions were on the recommendation of the architect and on BOE attorney Dail Cantrell.
“The reason this is on the agenda, is, you have an architect that you have employed to give counsel as a project manager and to review change orders to see if they are in line with industry standards and then you have a builder that you have employed that builds according to the plans given to him by the architect,” Cantrell said. He then invited Thomas to explain his position on change order 10 and pay order 9.
Thomas addressed the board regarding the change order request that he referenced that on July 11, 2025, the contractor sent the architect “the Goddard letter” that was allegedly from their steel subcontractor at the time that “alleged that there were steel delays on the project.”
“After that, you guys invite us, Goddard and GCE here to answer questions, the letter was mentioned, they approached me after the meeting and asked me to send them the letter, which I did, a couple of days later, they called me and said they did not write that letter, so at the Nov. 18th board meeting, you guys voted to refer that letter to the D.A.s office and state comptroller; I thought the item was resolved,” Thomas said.
However, on December 31st, 2025, the contractor sent in a request for change order 10, which requested 271 additional calendar days be added to the project, based on that original Goddard letter, and on January 16th, our office sent a rejection on change order 10 based on two things, one a lack of evidence provided by the contractor and what was provided is under criminal investigation and two, it is my due diligence to look into this and try to find any other comparable steel delays in the past 12 to 16 months,” Thomas said. After that, the contractor sent a revised change order in, requesting 160 days be added to the project, down from the 271 days originally requested.
Thomas said he checked with a number of general contractors, and steel fabricators asking them all if they had seen any steel delays and the answer was no; he provided multiple examples.
Cantrell told the board that he had thought this was all worked out after the November meeting. He asked if his recommendation as project manager was to not grant any more project days and Thomas said yes, based on the research he had done.
Cantrell told board members that from a legal perspective, they would put themselves in a bind if they did not go with the recommendation of the architect they had hired because that is “what they were specifically being paid for.”
“My legal recommendation is to follow your architect’s advice, and I think if you don’t follow him, you are opening yourselves up to some liability,” Cantrell said.
Board member Brandon Johnson yielded some of his time so Emily Gaylor could address the board.
She said the delays were experienced and that not only did GCE get the letter from Goddard but had done some investigations of their own.
“Not only did we get the letter from Goddard about the delays, we also did some investigative powers of our own, and we reached out to the manufacturer, verified with them, is this something only Goddard is only telling us or are you also experiencing some delays in preparing the steel and getting it out of the mills and getting it to the job sites, they corroborated all that with us and said that was a real issue they were experiencing. With that knowledge, we forwarded the letter on,” Gaylor said. She also said she had “gotten verification that the “letter is legitimate and was legitimately provided from Goddard’s email server to GCE.”
“I have evidence of that, and it has been provided to our counsel, it has been provided to the board’s counsel, as well as district attorney Jared Effler’s office, so that item has been resolved and no further questions have been asked since that has been provided to Mr. Effler’s office,” Gaylor said, adding that is what led to change order 10 being drafted.
“It accurately shows the days that we experienced that put us out on this project,” Gaylor said. She said that in a progress meeting that was held on site, there had been discussion on the change order that was drafted in December.
“We discussed with Mr. Thomas and that we understand that asking for all those days would put it well into 2026. It is not our intention to do that, we intend to be done far sooner than that and, in that meeting, we discussed it that I would be able to go back to my office and revise it so the days coincided with the June date that we have projected to be done. So that is why it changed and why it was revised, it properly needed to be noted on the front end that it was for all the delay time, do we think we are going to take all that time, no, we want to be done with this project,” Gaylor said.
Johnson asked Cantrell if the board had received notification that the letter from Goddard was legitimate as Gaylor claimed.
Cantrell said no, he had not been contacted by the state comptroller or the attorney general’s office that the investigation was closed. He said they would be notified when it was finished.
Gaylor said she had not received anything from General Effler’s Office. She said she had proof from a “third party server company” that showed photo evidence of the letter and how it had been transmitted.
“With all due respect this whole thing seems pretty far-fetched,” Johnson said.
Cantrell said he had received what she was speaking of, but that in his opinion, it would “not be given any credence by the attorney general or the state comptroller and that the state of Tennessee would do its own forensic investigation.”
The second item voted no on was for a $150,000 pay order for installation of eight-inch hollow core square plank. According to the architect, this should not cost more than $40,000 to $45,000 and that it was too high of a cost for the work for him to recommend payment on the order. He used multiple examples from other jobs to show the cost comparison and what it should be.
“I am at an impasse, I can’t just rubber stamp it … this is just too much,” Thomas said.
Gaylor said this particular line item “had always been a base bid of the project.”
The board voted not to approve the pay order. The contractor will have to submit a new pay order which will then go through the architect once more.
Board Chairman Jeffrey Miller made the motion to reject and not approve the pay order.
Johnson said he felt like the board had been constantly “stuck between two arguing parents” during the process.
“I don’t know who is telling the truth and who is not, until we receive some concrete proof about this Goddard thing, is it factual, is it accurate, until the comptroller weighs in and the attorney general weighs in, I don’t know what to do, we are getting two starkly different stories and I don’t know how we can approve this until we get the truth,” Johnson said.
“I would just like to point out too; my job is to get to the truth and to provide this documentation as the backup; I am liable if I don’t do this. Again, I want to agree with them if I can, because I have to go through all this … I want to get at the truth and administer this contract which is what you hired me to do and get this job done,” Thomas said. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-02/11/2026-6AM)