Months after Richmond’s new River City Middle School was completed and turned over to Richmond Public Schools, William Bullock is still waiting to get paid nearly $200,000.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said the 78-year-old painting contractor who has been self-employed for 56 years. “You do the work, you expect to get paid. But in this case, the money doesn’t come.”

It’s not clear how many subcontractors like Mr. Bullock are still waiting to receive their payments from the school contract. Like many Black-owned businesses, he can ill afford not to be paid as agreed.

Mayor Levar M. Stoney set goals to ensure a high percentage of the work on the new city schools was performed by minority businesses.

But Mr. Bullock said the mayor has not responded to his complaint about not receiving full payment.

The Free Press also has not received a response from city officials who were involved with the school construction project, including the city’s chief operating officer, Robert Steidel, and Patricia Foster, director of the Richmond Office of Minority Business Development.

No evidence has surfaced to show any city official has taken action to ensure Mr. Bullock receives the money that he claims he is due.

In the contract, City Hall states that it accepts no responsibility for ensuring that contractors pay subcontractors. All companies involved in doing construction work for the city are barred from filing liens against the school building in court, a contrast with private projects where such actions are common when subcontractors are not paid.

Winchester-based Howard Shockey & Sons, the construction manager at risk for the $64.5 million project, did not respond to a Free Press request for comment on Mr. Bullock’s situation. Mr. Bullock said he has not heard from them.

According to Mr. Bullock, he was awarded a $540,000 contract to paint the new school, which he did, but he said he is still waiting to be paid about $47,000 from that contract.

The city usually withholds about 8 percent of a contract, called retainage, as a stick to ensure the project is fully complete before the final payment is issued. The building is listed as done.

The city’s building commissioner issued the required occupancy permit in November. Richmond Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras has advised the School Board that the final fixes to construction mistakes of all kinds – known as the “punch list” – were finished earlier this year, in the final week of March.

Still, Mr. Bullock said he has received no notice of when that retainage will be paid.

The rest of the money he is due is from what are called change orders, or additions to a contract that were not accounted for in the original bid.

Change orders were commonplace in the construction of the three new schools, according to Mr. Steidel. He reported that $124 million in change orders were issued during construction of River City Middle and Cardinal and Henry L. Marsh III elementary schools out of the $146 million spent.

Mr. Bullock was among those who were supposed to get additional money.

In the summer of 2020, Mr. Bullock was in- structed to paint the ceilings in the school cafeteria and the two gymnasiums in the building.

A review of the plans that Mr. Bullock received and on which he based his winning bid shows blank spaces and no instructions to paint those three ceilings. He said he spent $130,000

just to do that work. He said that if those ceilings had been included as part of the scope of work he initially bid on, his bid would have been around $660,000 to account for the paint and labor involved.

He said he was told by AECOM, the company the city hired to manage school construction and other projects, that a change order would be submitted. He said he was told that if he didn’t do the work, another contractor would be brought in.

“So I did the work,” Mr. Bullock said.

He also was called on to repaint walls in Sections C and E of the school, which had been smeared with Sheetrock coating or “mud,” after he painted the walls the first time. Shockey’s staff reported what happened as “excess pointing.”

Mr. Bullock said the workers were supposed to do small touchups on the walls, but he said they did much more, ruining the completed paint job. He said that he spent about $20,000 to redo the walls in those sections. That extra work, too, was supposed to be covered by change orders, he said.

Facing a stonewall of silence from City Hall, Mr. Bullock said he is now seeking to engage an attorney to try to collect.

Mr. Bullock said the same thing happened about eight years ago when he was awarded contracts to paint Broad Rock and Oak Grove elementary schools. He said he was owed about $130,000, settled for $65,000 so he could move ahead.

“I am hoping I don’t have to do that again,” he said.