A Letter To The Editor 9-29-12

Dear County Council members, I see that a $12.5 million bond is being obtained for the new Bennett school. The question I am asking is when the county council is going to do something about the out of control construction costs of these school projects. We have one Taj Mahal Bennett school and we do not need another one. The BOE have people on their staff that has experience in school construction and costing to develop a functional school that does not have all the bells and whistles that the BOE thinks they need. Are these people being told by the higher levels to not design a cost efficient design or just let the architectural firm do what they want and we will sell this to everyone as what we need. The BOE has more major school projects in the long term schedule and if they are not put to task about cost control, we (the taxpayer) will be looking at Taj Mahal III & IV. It is amazing how everyone seems to fall for the smoke and mirror show that the BOE puts up every time they WANT SOMETHING. I want my tax dollar spend in a cost effective manner. The BOE will come into council meeting or public forums and say “this is for the children”. No, this is for the BOE ego, so they can say “look what we have given you for the children”. A Taj Mahal building will not teach students. A functional school building with proper learning technology inside the building being used by qualified, experienced teacher will produce students who will go out and become an asset to the community. The BOE is currently hiring inexperienced new teachers fresh out of college because they are cheaper than experienced teachers. The money saved is going to new non-teaching positions at the central office. If you looked at the staffing level at the central office, you would wonder how they all fit in the building. I wonder how many positions could be cut out if the BOE would do what every business has had to do with cut backs and personal being able to do multi jobs. All the department in Wicomico County have had cutbacks and staff reduction, so why not the BOE? We know that the BOE submits a budget to the council. Their budget would take a CPA to figure out what each line item is for. The BOE has become an expert in hiding money in line items that will never be used. A teacher can go thru the budget and find that 10% of the line items are bogus. I have had principals tell me the BOE knows exactly where they are hiding money in the budget. All this raises questions about the BOE and the way they do business and how true is the information being released to the public. As far the comment made about this project putting local construction workers to work. There are NO general contactors on the eastern shore who can handle a major school project. The general contractor who will get this project will be from the western shore (Whiting Turner). The general contractor will use his own hand picked subcontractors on a majority of the work and a few local subcontractor may get a small percentage of the work. Most local subcontractors WILL NOT bid this work because of the wage scale rates and paperwork. A wage scale rate job will make the local subcontractor have to borrow money for startup to pay salaries until he receives this first draw of money from billings. The general contractor (Whiting Turner will most likely get this project) will make the local subcontractor jump thru hoops with paperwork to get his money. So, comments about putting construction workers to work made by the BOE can be very misleading. Times are tough and they will not get better for a few years. The taxpayers are tired of our money not being spent in a proper manner for school construction projects. We expect a response from the BOE, but they can save their comments and quotes and let their actions speak. We are expecting the County Council to also let their actions speak. Concerned Taxpayer William M Davenport