The Altoona Area School Board approved change orders for its high school building project Monday with a 5-2 vote.

The construction manager, Reynolds Construction, said work on the addition to the Fieldhouse and storm piping for the new B building are underway.

But there is a list of change orders totaling about $54,500, which is to be taken from the contingency fund budgeted in the total cost of the project.

“One of the biggest things reared its head early in the game,” said Mike Arnold, vice president of Reynolds Construction, which was hired to be the board’s advocate, voice to contractors and overseer of contractors’ costs.

A $30,000 added expense will address two abandoned underground vaults that were not shown on drawings. The vaults will be filled to meet construction standards.

There was also an $11,000 change order to remove the top of a steam vault in the renovation of the A building and fill it with concrete. The other changes were smaller and included changing valves at therapy tubs to be the same as existing valves, a difference of $2,400.

Arnold said that’s why the district has a 3 percent construction contingency built into the project cost.

“Your project is a combo of extensive renovation and new construction. We are headed down a path I ex­pected,” Arnold said. “Com­ing out of the ground and coordinating utilities. Once we get out of the sub-soil conditions, you’ll see very few change orders. Should scale down rather quickly.”

President Dutch Brennan, Vice President Wayne Hippo, Bill Ceglar, Rick Hoov­er and Kelly Irwin Adams approved the chan­ges while Sharon Bream and Ed Kreuz voted against them. Dave Francis and Ron Johnston were absent.

J.C. Orr is the general contractor for the project.

A large portion of the meeting after that was spent debating two policies, one regarding change orders and one regarding approval of payments on contracts.

While it had already been addressed at a facilities committee meeting last week, Kreuz informed the whole board Monday that the $11,000 change order regarding steam vault was completed without going through the policy approved by the board in recent months.

Bream criticized the slip-up, admonishing a Reynolds Construction representative for letting it go without board approval.

“We had board approval on any change order under $10,000 would be brought to the facilities meeting of three board members and Superintendent Charles Prijatelj. And anything over $10,000 must be voted on by the whole board at a special meeting,” Bream said.

The work needed to be done, and J.C. Orr did the work to stay on schedule. A delay could have potentially cost the district.

For that reason, Hippo said he believes Orr did the district a favor and the board should not micromanage change orders unless they are $25,000 or higher. Hippo added that the board hired Reynolds to examine change orders to ensure they are needed and should let them do what the board paid them to do.

Typically, a school board only votes on change orders if they are $25,000 or over, Arnold said.

Later in the meeting, Bream took issue with payments made to the board’s project architect KCBA Architects and the board’s bond counsel on the project.

While past board practice had been to approve each payment on contracts as they came up monthly, a school board policy surfaced from 2015 that enabled the payment to be made without board approval and instead be listed for information-only purposes in meetings.

The policy is shaped in accordance with state law that allows payments on contracts to be made without board approval because districts could be penalized for late payments if a board cannot hold a meeting.

Because the board had no July meeting, the policy was employed by administrators to pay its contracts — which are already approved by the board — and administrators stated they will continue to use that policy, although it can be changed by a board majority.