The city of Lawrence will take over inspections of the remaining six school makeovers that are part of a $92.5 million bond issue, city commissioners voted Tuesday.

Commissioners unanimously approved an agreement saying that city staff would conduct building and fire code plan reviews, issue permits and inspect the construction of projects at Schwegler, Deerfield, Pinckney, Sunflower, Broken Arrow and Prairie Park elementary schools.

Tuesday’s action by the City Commission followed a unanimous vote by the Lawrence school board to use city inspectors on the remaining school district projects.

School board members on Monday terminated the contract of Combes Construction, the primary contractor for work at New York Elementary School. Work site safety issues at New York elementary have been at the center of complaints about the inspection process for school projects.

The school board issued a joint statement criticizing how Combes had handled the project.

“The failure of Combes Construction, our prime construction contractor for New York Elementary School, to protect the worksite and maintain temporary fencing around construction areas is simply unacceptable,” Vanessa Sanburn, board president, read from a prepared statement Monday.

Sanburn went on to say, “Combes Construction has not and will not be involved in any other school projects.”

An 8-year-old boy, Max McGill, was injured Aug. 13 when he fell at the New York elementary construction site. He suffered a broken nose, collarbone and rib, and the top portion of both of his lungs collapsed.

KT Walsh, of the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association, told commissioners Tuesday that McGill’s father had taken time off work to stay with his son at Children’s Mercy Hospital. She said the neighborhood association gathered donations to pay the family’s utility bills.

“I just want you to know the impact on this single hardworking dad and his kid,” Walsh said.

The plan approved Tuesday mandates that USD 497 pay half of the city’s regular permitting fees.

The school district previously asked to have about $280,000 in city building permit fees waived as part of the school improvement projects. Despite waiving fees for other types of projects in the city, commissioners declined to waive the fees for the district.

Commissioners also exempted the school projects from the city’s building codes and allowed the district to find its own inspectors.

Current commissioners Matthew Herbert, Leslie Soden and Stuart Boley were not on the commission in May 2014, when the decisions were made.

Herbert, who is a government and civics teacher at Lawrence High School, said after the vote Tuesday that the commission should consider waiving fees for the school district in future projects.

“Lots of stuff comes before the commission pretty regularly that deals with giving incentives or breaks of some kind to businesses, be it a property tax abatement or be it some form of an IRB [industrial revenue bond],” Herbert said. “And yet it baffles me that we were unwilling initially to waive fees for a school.

“I get the argument with economic development, but every single day I work at Lawrence High and I think what I’m doing is economic development,” he said. “I think what we do has a big impact on our community.”

In response to Herbert’s comments, Mayor Mike Amyx, the only current commissioner who was involved in the May 2014 decision, said, “There were a whole lot of comments and questions when this came before us, and a lot of things expressed.”

He agreed that the City Commission should consider in the future changing school district fees.

The commission’s action Tuesday also calls on the city to resume its normal inspection and permitting process going forward.

“The school district, like any number of organizations within the city, does quite a bit of permitting for remodels, that kind of work,” said Scott McCullough, director of planning and development services. “We’ve always had a good relationship with the school district on those matters, so this gets us back with them on that.”

In other business, commissioners:

• Unanimously gave final approval for Verizon to build a 120-foot-tall communications tower at 2001 Moodie Road. The city and the Brook Creek Neighborhood Association recommended the commission approve the site. Commissioners rejected in July a location at 1725 Bullene Ave. over concerns that it was too close to homes.