June 24th LCTA Newsletter


Retrospective of the June 4th 2011 LC Taxpayers Association Newsletter
Considering the limited space, cost of printing and postage, The LCTA Newsletter did a fine job in providing a historical overview of the never ending School Building Project.
Since I am not burdened with such space limitations and postage expense I want to expand upon some of the historical events that were not reported in the Associations Newsletter.
Following the earthshaking fire inspection in August of 2005 there was a great deal of hand wringing and head scratching. I recall hearing remarks highly critical of then Fire Chief, Harry Hallgring who was recently appointed. Chief Hallgring brought with him many years of experience in fire prevention procedures and knowledge of current fire safety codes, the likes of which apparently had never visited the inside of the Wilbur & McMahon School.
The Wilbur & McMahon facility is akin to “the house that Jack built.” It is a mish mash of buildings going back to 1929. The building makes no sense in terms of layout, traffic, dead end hallways and vast wasted space. All of that notwithstanding, it is a fine educational institution with an exceptionally good track record when it comes to producing a quality education for LC youngsters.
But there were/are physical plant problems with the facility. For openers it does not have a fire sprinkler system. There is a ton of outdated heating and air movement equipment, electrical services that were installed by Tom Edison, a leaky roof and a major egress problem.
The Newsletter states that JCJ Architects was hired by the Facilities Needs Committee. In fact JCJ was hired by the School Committee specifically to design a “new school” and to guide The Facilities Needs Committee through the RIDE approval process for State funds to reimburse the taxpayers to the tune of approximately 1/3 of the most of the costs associated with building a new school.
That is precisely where the process started to go astray. First of all, Stage I in the RIDE process requires the School District to submit a “Letter of Intent” and to appoint a “School Building Committee.” That process was not done for close to 18 Months and then only when then Superintendent Ron Devine became aware of the mandated process in a conversation with Mr. Joseph da Silva of RIDE. Clearly JCJ was ignorant of the process, and when confronted with the problem they tried to blame Joe da Silva for revising the process after they had been retained. This was not true; the process had been revised in the middle of 2007 six months before JCJ was hired.
Prior to Dr. Devine’s course correction, the Facilities Needs Committee had laid in plans for an extensive Dog & Pony Show to sell the more than 35 million dollar proposed building project, leading up to a Special Financial Town Meeting to approve funding. This process was in direct violation of RIDE published practices. Yet more wasted time, effort, and money.
So the School District was forced to go back to square one, hastily prepare a letter of intent, and appoint a School Building Committee and subsequently dump JCJ. Close to two years were down the drain, not to mention the $118,000 architectural fee. It has been all downhill ever since.
So then the new School Building Committee was off and running if you can call it that. The School Committee under the inept leadership of Michael Harrington appointed a 20 member committee. I don’t know if you have ever served on an elected or appointed committee, but let me assure you that a committee of that size is non-functional. Results to date confirm that judgment!
RIDE mandates eight (8) appointees including the Superintend of Schools, The Principal, a person familiar with maintaining the building, a teacher, a representative of the town governing body (council member), a financial person, a citizen with either engineering, construction or architectural experience, and at least one member of the School Committee. Mr. Harrington Appointed himself and three other members of the School Committee plus a group of interested citizens making up the 20 member committee.
From the get-go there were organizational problems. Nobody, it seemed wanted to step up and be nominated to lead the committee. Mr. Harrington assumed the chairmanship during several meetings until he handpicked Tom Alder as Chairman. Tom is a nice guy but even he admitted that he was had no prior experience managing a committee that was faced with such a huge responsibility and the potential of committing the town to spend possibly more than 30 million dollars. Tom went on OJT.
Among the many vital tasks the new committee had to perform was the hiring of yet another architect. The selection process was a nightmare and was in violation of the State of RI process for hiring architects and engineers. State Law requires a Qualification Based Selection (QBS) process. The process that the building committee followed was a circus that ended up hiring the least qualified most expensive of more than 20 applicants. The deal was awarded to Durkee-Brown at the infamous Memorial Day meeting of 2010 which resulted in a violation of the Open Meetings Act.
A major stumbling block became time. The committee and its inexperienced architect had to complete the Stage I submission and get RIDE approval by November of 2010. The RIDE requirement is that the project must be submitted and Stage I approved within one year of the date of the approval of the Districts Letter of Intent submission. A real wrench in the gears came when the Town Council agreed only to allow the Stage I Submission to go forward with a huge caveat. The Council slapped a 14 million dollar construction cost cap on the project.
I want to take you way back to a time very early on in this whole crazy process. It was at a regular meeting of the School Committee that I asked Chairman Michael Harrington what the committee would do if the plans for a new school failed to be approved by the voters of Little Compton. He said that they would have to deal with it. I asked if there was a “Plan B” or an alternative plan. His response was; “there is no Plan B.”
Well guess what, now there is a Plan B, and as pointed out in the LCTA Newsletter it is to FIX THE PROBLEMS following the RGB model.
A bit more on RGB… RGB was the child of the LCTA. Roger Lord made a comprehensive Power Point presentation at the annual meeting of the LCTA which dissected the original Mount Vernon Group (MVG) study and the subsequent JCJ review of the MVG findings. There were enough holes in the inflated (18.5 million dollar) JCJ review to sink a ship. Subsequently Roger gave his presentation to the Town Council. Mind you, this all took place when there was still a School Facility Needs Committee deliberating how they were going to sell the plan for a new school. Don Gomez, Chairman of the Facilities Needs Committee was present at Roger’s presentation to the Council. Even he agreed that there needed to be yet another engineering review.
Subsequently the Needs Committee published bid specifications and RGB was hired. If not for Roger, that never would have happened and there would be no “Plan B” as we know it today. Kudos to Roger and the LCTA Board of Directors.
So as you can see, there has been a sordid history in the evolution of the School Building program. As the late Paul Harvey used to say at the end of his broadcasts; “Now you know the rest of the story.”
Sarge