‘Connected’
firm gets nonbid
school contract
A company partly owned
By Crystal Kua
by a Cayetano friend gets
the Kapolei High job
Star-BulletinA company partially owned by a politically connected builder has won a second major nonbid contract to build a school in Kapolei -- a planned $75 million high school.
State officials said there was never a guarantee that Makai Village Partnership, associated with Bert A. Kobayashi, would build the high school.
Kobayashi, a close friend and supporter of Gov. Ben Cayetano, is president of PAB Investment Corp., one of two general partners for Makai Village Partnership.
Kathy Inouye, chief operating officer of Makai Village Partnership, said that until the time the construction contract was signed April 1, the state had the option to seek proposals elsewhere.
"Nothing was guaranteed. We had only the design contract," Inouye said.
In signing the agreement, the company is taking financial risks by proceeding with the project even though funding isn't solidified and by promising to finish the project on time and within budget, she said.
The Star-Bulletin last year reported a series of exclusive deals that led to nearly $37 million of planning and construction contracts for the middle school and $4.3 million of contracts for the design and planning for the high school.
The state says the goal was to bring two new schools to a rapidly growing area and open them on time -- the middle school this year and the high school next year.
Lester Chuck, Department of Education facilities director, said that if Kapolei High School is not opened on time, students would instead attend Campbell High School, where enrollment could swell from about 2,300 this year to 2,700 by the 2001 school year. "That's intolerable."
Cayetano has said the handling of the contracts was legal, and he denied that his friendship played a role in the company's landing the work.
Spokeswoman Kathleen Racuya-Markrich said the governor was unavailable for comment yesterday but his position on the matter has not changed.
A phone call to Kobayashi was returned by Inouye, who said Kobayashi has not been involved in the school contracts. "He's not even present in any of our meetings."
The state signed the agreement with Makai Village to proceed with construction without entertaining other bids.
Competitive bids are required for most major state projects to get the lowest price for taxpayers.
The agreement was signed after a year of negotiations and about a week after the governor released a $1 million emergency appropriation approved this session by the Legislature to begin construction.
The remaining construction funds are pending legislative approval.
The total construction cost is $75 million, but the state is seeking from the Legislature $35 million this session and $15 million next year so that ninth-graders can begin attending the school in the fall of 2000, Chuck said.
The state has the option of negotiating a construction agreement with Makai Village as a result of the agreement for the company to develop the state-planned Villages of Kapolei.
George White, spokesman for the state Housing and Community Development Corp., said the original development agreement came about as a result of a competitive-bidding process.
That request for proposals did not include school construction, White said.
