When is $250,000 greater than $623,900?
When it is all about politics, of course.
The D11 recall supporters, including sitting board members John Gudvangen, Tami Hasling, and Sandra Mann, have tried to make a big deal over the fact that a consultant was hired by the district and board majority to help the district in its transition to a site based management system. The consultant will be paid $250,000 for its first year of work. If the consultant is needed after year 1, the amount will decrease for each subsequent year. The work of the consultant will include training and advising the district leadership on transforming the entire district to a school building oriented system that will drive student achievement and increase accountability. The consultant will help to develop non-negotiables, it will help to establish and adjust site based budgets, it will assist in setting up student weighting formulas, it will assist with building leadership training, and it will train the staff on generating community involvement in the schools. There will be much work to be done by the consultant in the first year alone.
The three board members mentioned above were opposed to hiring a consultant. They clamored that this was just another example of the 4 reformers wasting D11 tax dollars. Mann said that she would never vote for a consultant fee of $250,000. She pointed out that Terry Bishop had worked in a site based system in Texas and she felt that he should be able to handle the transition by himself (Bishop disagreed). Hasling said that the board had wasted enough money lately and that she could not support this expenditure. Gudvangen said that this was just too high of a price for him to support. The motion to hire the consultant passed on a 4-3 vote on August 23, 2006, with Gudvangen, Hasling, and Mann voting against site based.
Now let's jump forward to November 8. During this board meeting, the board was asked to vote to pay a consultant $623,900 to help the district with a possible fiber optic project. What was this consultant to do that would cost the district this much? I asked that question and received an email reply from Dr. Bishop. A copy of the memorandum is below:
TO: Board of Education
FROM: Dr. Terry N. Bishop
Superintendent
SUBJECT: REQUESTED INFORMATION ON CONSULTANT FOR FIBER OPTIC NETWORK
DATE: November 1, 2006
Attached is an email from Director Cox requesting information about the network consultant. Also attached is a response from John Elliott, Glenn Gustafson and Dennis Shultz.
Below is a quick summary of the response to specific questions:
How much is consultant being paid?
Phase I (feasibility study) - $207,128.00
Phase II (project design/permits) - $405,610.00
Phase III (project management/construction oversight) - $623,900.00
In general, I would say that Power Engineering was asked to look at all options and make a recommendation that was both cost effective and would provide District 11 the most capability for the students and the staff over a ten to twenty year period.
Please let us know if you have questions or need additional information.
Phase 1 of the project was simply to determine if the fiber optic network could be handled by D11 internally. That cost to the district was $207,128. Did the three board members who objected to the site based cost complain? No - none of them said a word.
Did we really need to spend the money for phase 1 of this project? Here is a reply from D11 contracting officer John Elliot:
From: ELLIOTT, JOHN L.
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 12:28 PM
To: BISHOP, TERRY N.Cc: GUSTAFSON, GLENN; SHULTZ, DENNISSubject: FW: Consultant
T.B.,
This is the recommended response to Director Cox. It includes the recommended changes from Glenn.
The District’s voters passed a technology bond to establish a fiber optic network connecting all of our schools with a fast wide area network (WAN) for data, telecommunications, video, security, and distance learning. The fiber optic network WAN will replace existing T-1 lines at the schools.
Following a best value competition, the District entered into a consulting contract with Power Engineers to assist the District’s Network Services Department in determining the best solution for developing a new fiber optic network. Power Engineers was selected by the evaluation team to provide these services based on its professional expertise and experience in providing this type of service to industry and governmental agencies. Specifically Power Engineering was contracted to conduct a feasibility study on all potential options for a fiber optic network implementation to include evaluation of risks, determination of lease versus buy, assessment of costs, exploration of any educational funding available and recommended implementation approaches. The contract has three phases; however, as of this date only Phase I has been awarded at a price of $207,128. Of that amount the contractor has invoiced and been paid $190,274. Power Engineers has performed the research, obtained the cost data, and as a result made the recommendation that the lease of the Colorado Springs Utility ring and the build of the laterals from the ring to the schools was the best approach to satisfy the District’s requirement. The Qwest option was dismissed as unfeasible based on the bond proceeds prohibition covering leased costs, the E-rate funding dependency and Qwest’s total life time cost for providing the network services.
Notice that there was no real option for the district to take because of the legal limitation on the bond issue. D11 was required to own the fiber optic network because the law says that is the case. We paid over $200,000 for a consultant to tell us something that we already knew based on a phone call to our bond attorney, Sherman and Howard.
Eric Christen and I voted against this expenditure of funds. The 3 who complained about the $250,000 consultant did not object at all to the $623,000 consultant.
Where is the outrage from the recall group Chaos? Where is the outrage over this waste of tax payer dollars? Of course Chaos won't complain because this expenditure was voted on by the board members who they control. The faux outrage over the site based consultant was simply to add fuel to the recall fire, nothing more, nothing less.
Who is playing politics on this board?
The D11 recall supporters, including sitting board members John Gudvangen, Tami Hasling, and Sandra Mann, have tried to make a big deal over the fact that a consultant was hired by the district and board majority to help the district in its transition to a site based management system. The consultant will be paid $250,000 for its first year of work. If the consultant is needed after year 1, the amount will decrease for each subsequent year. The work of the consultant will include training and advising the district leadership on transforming the entire district to a school building oriented system that will drive student achievement and increase accountability. The consultant will help to develop non-negotiables, it will help to establish and adjust site based budgets, it will assist in setting up student weighting formulas, it will assist with building leadership training, and it will train the staff on generating community involvement in the schools. There will be much work to be done by the consultant in the first year alone.
The three board members mentioned above were opposed to hiring a consultant. They clamored that this was just another example of the 4 reformers wasting D11 tax dollars. Mann said that she would never vote for a consultant fee of $250,000. She pointed out that Terry Bishop had worked in a site based system in Texas and she felt that he should be able to handle the transition by himself (Bishop disagreed). Hasling said that the board had wasted enough money lately and that she could not support this expenditure. Gudvangen said that this was just too high of a price for him to support. The motion to hire the consultant passed on a 4-3 vote on August 23, 2006, with Gudvangen, Hasling, and Mann voting against site based.
Now let's jump forward to November 8. During this board meeting, the board was asked to vote to pay a consultant $623,900 to help the district with a possible fiber optic project. What was this consultant to do that would cost the district this much? I asked that question and received an email reply from Dr. Bishop. A copy of the memorandum is below:
TO: Board of Education
FROM: Dr. Terry N. Bishop
Superintendent
SUBJECT: REQUESTED INFORMATION ON CONSULTANT FOR FIBER OPTIC NETWORK
DATE: November 1, 2006
Attached is an email from Director Cox requesting information about the network consultant. Also attached is a response from John Elliott, Glenn Gustafson and Dennis Shultz.
Below is a quick summary of the response to specific questions:
How much is consultant being paid?
Phase I (feasibility study) - $207,128.00
Phase II (project design/permits) - $405,610.00
Phase III (project management/construction oversight) - $623,900.00
In general, I would say that Power Engineering was asked to look at all options and make a recommendation that was both cost effective and would provide District 11 the most capability for the students and the staff over a ten to twenty year period.
Please let us know if you have questions or need additional information.
Phase 1 of the project was simply to determine if the fiber optic network could be handled by D11 internally. That cost to the district was $207,128. Did the three board members who objected to the site based cost complain? No - none of them said a word.
Did we really need to spend the money for phase 1 of this project? Here is a reply from D11 contracting officer John Elliot:
From: ELLIOTT, JOHN L.
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 12:28 PM
To: BISHOP, TERRY N.Cc: GUSTAFSON, GLENN; SHULTZ, DENNISSubject: FW: Consultant
T.B.,
This is the recommended response to Director Cox. It includes the recommended changes from Glenn.
The District’s voters passed a technology bond to establish a fiber optic network connecting all of our schools with a fast wide area network (WAN) for data, telecommunications, video, security, and distance learning. The fiber optic network WAN will replace existing T-1 lines at the schools.
Following a best value competition, the District entered into a consulting contract with Power Engineers to assist the District’s Network Services Department in determining the best solution for developing a new fiber optic network. Power Engineers was selected by the evaluation team to provide these services based on its professional expertise and experience in providing this type of service to industry and governmental agencies. Specifically Power Engineering was contracted to conduct a feasibility study on all potential options for a fiber optic network implementation to include evaluation of risks, determination of lease versus buy, assessment of costs, exploration of any educational funding available and recommended implementation approaches. The contract has three phases; however, as of this date only Phase I has been awarded at a price of $207,128. Of that amount the contractor has invoiced and been paid $190,274. Power Engineers has performed the research, obtained the cost data, and as a result made the recommendation that the lease of the Colorado Springs Utility ring and the build of the laterals from the ring to the schools was the best approach to satisfy the District’s requirement. The Qwest option was dismissed as unfeasible based on the bond proceeds prohibition covering leased costs, the E-rate funding dependency and Qwest’s total life time cost for providing the network services.
Notice that there was no real option for the district to take because of the legal limitation on the bond issue. D11 was required to own the fiber optic network because the law says that is the case. We paid over $200,000 for a consultant to tell us something that we already knew based on a phone call to our bond attorney, Sherman and Howard.
Eric Christen and I voted against this expenditure of funds. The 3 who complained about the $250,000 consultant did not object at all to the $623,000 consultant.
Where is the outrage from the recall group Chaos? Where is the outrage over this waste of tax payer dollars? Of course Chaos won't complain because this expenditure was voted on by the board members who they control. The faux outrage over the site based consultant was simply to add fuel to the recall fire, nothing more, nothing less.
Who is playing politics on this board?
posted by Craig Cox | 2:34 PM
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