Amid gathering construction boom, Fayette County middle school delay is a mistake

With Congress’ passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill there is understandable excitement to get to work rebuilding America’s crumbling foundation. However, last week’s delay of a new Fayette County school should put us all on warning that we’re unlikely to get everything we’re being promised.

Citing a 49% cost increase over the past year, the Fayette County School Board voted to delay the building of a new middle school. According to the Herald-Leader, 60% of the increase was due to the material costs. I’m sure the fierce competition for skilled workers in the labor market drove a good deal of the rest. Both are finite resources, the current lack of which has been well chronicled.

While you might think this decision was prudent and that the spike in material and labor costs will soon correct themselves, I think the board made a mistake because, if you’ve been paying attention to what the Biden Administration has been doing, that spike may be here for a while.

Earlier this year, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan. Among its many elements were billions of dollars given to state, county, and city governments. While some of this money will be spent on things such as hero pay and other COVID-related initiatives, most governments are looking to spend these one-time monies on projects they’d otherwise be unable to afford. For example, Fayette County has already earmarked $7.9 million of the $120 million it received for parks improvements. While the bill was passed earlier this year, even if it’s been allocated, most of that money has not yet been spent, meaning nationally, there is roughly $200 billion in public projects on the way in the coming months.

Now, add on top of that the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure bill. Thanks to the passage of the bill, which, to be clear, is much needed and was decades in the making, that’s nearly a trillion and a half dollars’ worth of public construction projects on the way. And that is to say nothing of investments being planned by individuals and private industry, such as Ford’s historic commitment in Hardin County.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the problem with the math here. While the Biden Administration can keep injecting cash into the economy, the one thing they can’t do is create more raw materials or skilled labor; and all of these projects require the same raw materials and the same skilled labor.

Simply put, these projects are all going to come in millions, and in many cases, billions of dollars over current budget. That means many other projects will get squeezed out. Others still will be let but put on long construction delays while the money waits for the materials and workers to spend it on. We’re looking at a crisis where projects will be funded but can’t be built; it’s almost always the other way around. How long will it take to clear up? Who knows, but it could take years to clear the logjam.

The Biden Administration’s economic recovery plan has been widely panned, even by President Obama’s economic advisors, so I don’t feel the need to dwell on it; but their insistence on continuing to inject more and more money into an economy running out of inventory to buy is going to have real world consequences. We’re already experiencing it here in Lexington.

That’s why I think it’s a mistake to postpone the middle school project. The costs are likely to stay high, if not increase, and we have over 1,000 middle school students in trailers. We need a new school. Delaying construction now will only increase costs later while providing kids with a subpar learning environment in the interim; it’s a lose-lose proposition. Let’s make Fayette County the first community to realize the coming economic storm and get our work done while we can.

Tres Watson is the former spokesman for the Republican Party of Kentucky, founder of Capitol Reins PR and the host of the Kentucky Politics Weekly Podcast.