Four years after Don Haskins PK-8 School was opened in the Upper Valley, subcontractors who worked on the project may finally receive more than $400,000 they’re still owed for their work.
The El Paso Independent School District board will consider a proposal Tuesday to approve the final payment of $403,760. The payment would go to the bonding company that was responsible for the project after the general contractor on the Haskins project went out of business; the bonding company would then pay the subcontractors.
The years of delays have left subcontractors frustrated and angry.
“We spend time thinking and responding and consulting with attorneys and making calls instead of increasing our work and attention on the business. It’s wasted time without doing anything wrong other than accepting the subcontract,” said Fred Marcus, owner of Avanti Floor Contractor, whose company worked on the Haskins project.
EPISD officials didn’t respond to a request for comment from El Paso Matters.
The $37.4 million Don Haskins campus was built as part of EPISD’s $668 million bond issue approved by district voters in 2016. The school opened in January 2022. It consolidated the old Lincoln Middle School with Roberts and Bond elementary schools.
For major construction projects, EPISD withholds 5% of total payment to the general contractor as retainage until the project is certified as complete. General contractors then pay subcontractors for work such as electrical, roofing, flooring, plumbing and landscaping. Subcontractors have already paid for their labor and supplies by the time they receive payment from contractors.
The Haskins project met final acceptance standards in September 2022, but the district continued to withhold the 5% retainage – about $1.9 million – because of a dispute between the general contractor, Urban Associates, and the roofing subcontractor, KASCO Structures.
The school board voted in December 2022 to release $1.5 million of the retainage to Urban, but withheld the remaining $400,000 until the district received a 20-year warranty on the school’s roof. Most of the remaining retainage was for work performed by subcontractors who had no connection to the roof work.
KASCO won a $193,905 judgment against Urban in 2024, but hasn’t collected the money. Urban, whose owners couldn’t be located for comment by El Paso Matters, appears to have gone out of business after the completion of the Haskins project.
EPISD didn’t declare Urban in default on the project, which would have made the bonding companies responsible for completing the roof work and obtaining the warranty. EPISD officials haven’t responded to questions about why the district didn’t declare Urban in default.
EPISD attorney Cezy Collins said in an Oct. 1, 2025, email to El Paso Matters that the district didn’t have a contractual relationship with subcontractors and their recourse was to liens against Urban. El Paso Matters reached out to the district after hearing complaints from the Southwest Specialty Contractors Association about payment delays to subcontractors.
Shortly after El Paso Matters asked the district about the status of the payments, the bonding companies – Zurich American Insurance Company and Colonial American Casualty and Surety Company – began efforts to obtain the roof warranty, according to documents posted with Tuesday’s school board agenda.
The bonding companies brought KASCO back to finish work on the roof at the end of October, the documents show. The 20-year warranty was provided Feb. 24, 2026.
The release of the retainage money doesn’t include interest payments on the money EPISD has been holding. Inflation since 2022 has eroded more than 10% of the value of the money owed to the subcontractors. Several of the subcontractors on the Haskins project said they don’t plan on bidding on EPISD projects in the future.
“I would not sign a contract with this school district. They have no interest in having good quality subcontractors that can stay in business. We get punished without doing anything wrong,” Marcus of Avanti Floor Contractor said.
EPISD is considering asking voters to approve a new bond issue this year, its first since 2016.
The post Delayed EPISD subcontractor payments near resolution as board considers $400K payout appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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