Buckeye Schools hires owner's representative for facilities

YORK TWP. — The Buckeye Board of Education hired Westfield Consulting Group to be the owner's representative for the district's facilities during a board meeting on Tuesday. Buckeye Superintendent Jeff Stanton said an owner's representative works for a school district to help guide the district through a possible facility plan. It is an additional resource rather than a replacement for a Buckeye employee. "For people who aren't familiar with architecture or engineering, you're interviewing people, you're asking questions to the best of your ability, but you really don't have anybody who is solely best interested in the school district," board President Seth Kujat said. "What an owner's rep allows us to do as a board is we can continue to interview and ask really great questions, but now we have an advocate on our behalf who solely represents our best interest as a school district." Stephen Shergalis from Westfield Consulting Group has experience managing construction projects for school districts in the area and has consulted for districts such as Cloverleaf Schools. "I do think that this will ultimately help us meet the community expectations," board member Roy Salazar said. The owner's representative contract will be from month to month, so the board of education can opt out of the services if they are deemed unnecessary at a certain point, Kujat said. The cost is $125 an hour, with the hours varying month to month. The maximum cost would be $5,000 for 40 hours of work in a month. "I know there will be questions out in the general public on why are we spending money when we don't even know what we're doing, and that's kind of the whole point of it," he said. "You hire a Realtor, you hire a project manager, you bring people onto your team that can then assist you to build the plan." Buckeye also gave an update on its campus and facility task force. Stanton said the people who are selected to serve as members of the task force are anticipated to be notified this week, and the first meeting will likely be in February. "I'd like to report to the community and to the board that we had over 50 applications from all corners of the school district," he said. "(There was) a wide range of experience represented in all the applicants. We're very excited to see the applications that we got." Contact reporter Madisyn Woodring at (330) 721-4049 or mwoodring@medina-gazette.com.