Legislators yesterday approved a $14.5 million budget boost to complete Cayman’s two new high schools, now projected to cost nearly $100 million each.

In a morning meeting of the Legislative Assembly’s Finance Committee, Premier McKeeva Bush sought nearly $50 million in supplemental grants to the 2011/12 budget, citing increasing demands for capital works, executive assets, equity investments and changes to loan arrangements.

The largest single appropriation among the new demands, however, was for funding to complete the John Gray and Clifton Hunter high schools, predicted by Minister for Education Rolston Anglin to cost nearly $100 million each before opening.

Detailing his request for $14.5 million addition to the $28.9 million budgeted in May 2011, Mr Anglin described rapidly escalating costs, and predicted they would reach levels well in excess of the sums originally bid on the projects.

“Through May 2009,” he said, describing expenditures by the previous PPM administration, “government spent $19 million on John Gray, and $33.8 million on Clifton Hunter.

“From June ’09 to the present,” he said, enumerating his own post-election efforts, “we spent $35.3 million on John Gray and $52 million on Clifton Hunter,” pegging total expenditure on the two at $54.3 million for John Gray and $85.8 million for the Frank Sound-based Cllifton Hunter, intended to serve students from North Side, East End and Bodden Town districts.

He said that completing both of them would require further funding: another $43 million for John Gray and $13.6 million for Clifton Hunter.

Ultimately, the Walkers Road-based school, scheduled to open in September 2013, would cost $97.4 million, he said. Costs for the Frank Sound institution, scheduled to open in September 2012, would reach $99.5 million.

Mr Anglin said “shoddy work that the Cayman Islands government had to fix” — and which was being carefully documented for redress — and changes to the original designs had boosted expenses. In light of soaring costs to finish the schools, he claimed, the winning 2007 Tom Jones International (TJI) tenders for the work had been flawed.

“The winning bids on the school tenders were for $61 million and $59 million,” he said, not differentiating between them. “These were not realistic. McAlpine came along and bid more on the Beulah Smith High School,” he continued, referring to a third schools project, since postponed, and the winning bidder.

“This is why Tom Jones walked off the site,” Mr Anglin said. “They realised they could not deliver the contract for those costs”

Challenged by former Minister for Education, now Leader of the Opposition, Alden McLaughlin, who oversaw the start of schools construction, Mr Anglin admitted the McAlpine bid had been only $55 million, but said the West Bay school was one-third smaller than the other two.

Counter lawsuits involving at least $8.75 million, filed earlier by both TJI and government were due to come to arbitration in late July, Mr Anglin said, while government had filed another lawsuit to recover funds pledged by the contractor as a performance bond.

Both Mr Bush and Mr Anglin anticipated the new funding for the schools would come from a pending sale of the Water Authority.

“We agreed that divestment of assets would enable the new high schools,” Mr Anglin said. “The District Administration is doing a ‘request for proposals’ in leasing the Water Authority assets. It’s a matter of timing and it will run tight, but we expect the divestment to come early in the next financial year,

“It will be substantial and half of the lease, we agreed earlier, will go to the schools and allow us to complete them,” he said.

A fractional $2.2 million, part of the $14.5 million supplement, Mr Anglin said, would go towards work on primary schools in Savannah, Bodden Town George Town and West Bay’s John A Cumber, and had already been spent on a hall and canteen at East End Primary.

“I went to the UK at least three times and they would not approve our budget,” Mr Bush told the committee yesterday about London talks for 2011/12 allocations, justifying yesterday’s request for supplemental funding.

“We made some cuts and we finally got it, but I told them that some of these things were going to come back again, and that we would have to see how our budget goes. This just puts some of that back again,” Mr Bush said, dismissing Mr McLaughlin’s final query: “So your budget was not realistic?”