In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards.
- Mark Twain in Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
It is Time to Recognize Reality
Jim Mulcahy
posted February 3, 2009
(This appeared in the Island Dispatch, January 30, 2009, and on Isledegrande.com, January 29, 2009.)
In the January 23, 2009 edition of the Island Dispatch School Board president Richard Little was quoted as saying, “It is frustrating from an individual perspective. We spent the last few years building back positions that, years ago, were hacked away and cut when things were tough then. You worked hard to get to this point. When you get here you’re lopped off again at the knees. We have developed some very well utilized programs, some very successful programs. We want to continue these things.” This statement was made in the context of the current State budget fiasco. As I have often said, Grand Island is going to fare poorly in any budget cut deliberations since we are viewed as an above average income community.
More importantly, if there ever was a statement that encapsulated what’s wrong with School Board management, Little’s is it. Of course the programs were well-utilized: they are subsidized. Dollars to donuts, if the participants had to fund them rather than the taxpayers at large, the demand would decline. It is no great achievement to get utilization if it is priced below cost. Anybody can do that, just look at ethanol.
These programs were, obviously, not part of the core curriculum or they wouldn’t have been cut in the past. As usual they were implemented at the behest of some vocal interest group (yes, Virginia, even schools have special interest groups). The Board likes to be liked. They play to the crowd, just like Leslie Neilsen, as Lt. Frank Drebin, in The Naked Gun when he was the home plate umpire, calling balls and strikes. He had no idea what call to make, so he said ‘strike’. The home fans cheered. After that no matter how far out of the strike zone the pitch was, he called it a strike. Likewise, the Board plays to the cheers, ignoring their responsibility for fiscal soundness.
Let me point out the obvious: New York State is broke. This budget ‘problem’ isn’t due to the recession. It may be exacerbated by it, but it didn’t cause the problem. New York’s rate of expense growth has far outpaced its ability to generate revenues. It has relied on Wall Street to fund it. Those days are gone. The Wall Street business model is dead.
This is a long-term problem. There are few things done in NY anymore that can’t be done elsewhere less expensively. Raising taxes will just drive more people out of the state and, more importantly, cause fewer to migrate in. Schools are going to have to learn to live within their means.
Chuck Schumer is trying to get stimulus or TARP funds to plug the funding gap for schools this year. What about next year? There won’t be any TARP or stimulus funds available but NY’s deficit problem won’t have disappeared. In fact, due to the ability to ignore it for one more year, it will be worse. If the Board is at all responsible they will use any of these funds that we may get to make extra debt reduction payments rather than use them to bolster spending.
Mr. Little’s last sentence was, “We want to continue these things.” If they are so valuable to those who partake in them, let them pay an extra-curricular fee for them.
There are plenty of areas where the Board could make real cuts, not the smoke and mirrors type that have been done in recent years, that would not affect the academic programs of the school. It only needs the will to do so.
TANSTAAFL
Jim Mulcahy
posted September 17, 2008
TANSTAAFL: “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”; if only our school District officials understood this. In a recent release that can be found on Isledegrande.com, the District lauded itself for having its bond rating raised by Moody’s. Moody’s cites the District’s bond rating upgrade from A2 to A1 to strong management and fiscal performance in a growing tax base. Other things equal, a higher bond rating is to be preferred to a lower one. However, rarely are they equal.
District superintendent, Robert Christmann, was quoted as saying “Moving to an A-1 rating from our old A-2 designation will save our taxpayers thousands of dollars over both the long and short term.” Let’s put some numbers to these great savings he is talking about. Recent tax-exempt bond rates were 3.55% for A-rated bonds and 3.19% for Aa bonds for a seven year term. I chose this term because the spread is the greatest between the rates, implying that the savings would be greatest in this term. These rates are for the A2 and the Aa2 grades, the midpoint within each rating category. To go from A2 to Aa2, there are two grades in between: A1 and Aa3. If we take the 36 basis point difference between the A2 and Aa2 rates: 3.55% -3.19%; and spread it linearly across the ratings we see that the A1 rating would have a 3.43% rate; the Aa3, 3.31%; and Aa2, 3.19%. This shows that the rating improvement resulted in a 12 basis point improvement in our cost of funds; that is .0012.
Using the $18.4 million capital project far and away the largest recent financing by the district, as the base for determining the savings, we find that the savings amount to $22,080 (=18.4MM*.0012) in total per year. As the outstandings decline the savings becomes smaller. The savings per household is under $4.00 per year. Whoopee!
How did we get to the upgrade? Moody’s says it was due to strong management and fiscal performance in a growing tax base. The growing tax base is only tangentially, at best, due to the District. I know they will say that a good school District increases property values. Unfortunately (for them), correlation is not equivalent to causation. Further, almost one-sixth of those eligible to attend the District’s schools opt out, choosing either parochial schools, private schools, or home-schooling. This provides a huge windfall for the District. Imagine the additional costs if these 600+ children suddenly decided to attend the District’s schools?
It is critical to keep in mind that bond ratings are only interested in the likelihood of the bond holders being made whole at the end of the day. What happens to the equity holders, or in this case the taxpayers, doesn’t concern them. In fact, equity holders are just nice fat mattresses for the bond holders to fall on; the higher the bond rating the thicker the mattress. In the corporate market, bonds do not like dividends because they are cash outflows. Bonds like big cash balances, the bigger the better, but they will settle for access to cash, through bank credit lines, for instance.
How does that have any relevance here, you ask? In March of this year, the District patted itself on the back for having a reserve balance in excess of $200,000. In August, we were told that it was over $2 million, and that there was an additional $2 million available to be put into their slush fund, oops!, I meant their capital reserve fund. Neither of these is a small number. The budget approved in May, according to the State Dept. of Education website, required $26,967,198 to be raised via the property tax. If they kept to the $200,000 reserve fund which was considered wonderful in March, $1.8 million less would need to have been raised, or 6.67% less. Instead of a 1.95% tax increase, there could have been a 4.72% decrease. If we didn’t fund an account that is inappropriate on so many levels, taxes could have been reduced another 7.42%. Combined these amount to over 14%. This would translate into about a $300 decrease in the average property tax bill.
Last Spring the Federal Government sent out stimulus checks that were less than this. Grand Island taxpayers, all Grand Island taxpayers, could have benefitted. People are paying in excess of 6% for a mortgage, more for home equity loans, and anywhere from 10% to 21.6% on their credit cards. Having this $300 would lower their interest expense substantially. Instead, the District hoards our cash to save 12 basis points on its borrowing costs. To put it another way, it would take one 75 years or more to get the savings from the improvement from an A2 to an A1 rating.
Does anyone seriously believe that this is sound fiscal management? Unfortunately, this is what passes for rational thinking on economic issues by the District. Besides being wasteful with our money, they don’t even have the most fundamental understanding of finance or economics. Do we really want these folks to have control over one cent more than is absolutely necessary to operate the District?
And Now, The Rest of the Story …
Jim Mulcahy
posted September 17, 2008
For those old enough to remember Paul Harvey’s radio broadcast every day (actually he is still on the air), he would tell what seems to be a complete anecdote... then saying, "and now, the rest of the story." Harvey then continues the tale, often completely reversing the impression you might take from the first part.
Similarly, I am going to tell you the rest of the story about the debacle concerning the request by a home-schooled child to participate in intramural extra-curricular activities. As Kevin Purdy , the Buffalo news Northtowns Correspondent wrote on 05/13/08: “Only one home-schooled student has signed up for the extracurricular activities opened nearly three weeks ago to non-enrolled children by the Grand Island Central School District, officials said Monday.” Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that the District made such a mockery of itself (See my “How do you Humiliate a Hamster? Letter to the Editor in April) in its resistance to opening up the extra-curriculars to all of the taxpayers’ children, only to have just one show up?
I happened to be speaking with the mother of the young girl who registered the other day and said, “All of that rigmarole only to have one person sign up.” I was then told that the District changed the time of the activity from after school to 8:00 am – 8:45 am; that is, prior to the school day. Huh? Clearly, this was a deliberate effort on the District’s part to discourage enrolment.
The petty, mean-spirited attitude of the District is appalling, but in keeping with the way they do things. I’m sure they didn’t think that this topic would get any further attention after Mr. Purdy’s article. This behavior, though, screams for answers: why did they change the time; who made the decision; and where was the Board in all of this?
At the July Board meeting when Jim Hanna announced his resignation, he went on about how this Board addressed all of the issues with the highest level of integrity. What a pantload. Either they are ignorant of what the District officials are doing or are complicit in their actions. Either way, the word integrity seems out of place.
The District officials, including the board, have done everything possible to frustrate allowing taxpayers’ children from partaking in these extra-curricular activities Note the word ‘extra’; this signifies that these activities are not part of the school system’s mission of educating children. If they were eliminated in their entirety the District would still be fulfilling its mandate. As such, there is no legitimate reason to exclude any of the taxpayers’ children from partaking. Needless to say, the District disagrees. They want nothing to do with anyone that they can’t control or manipulate completely. They are unused to being challenged or even questioned, despite spending $50 million of our money.
While this particular issue doesn’t affect very many of the people on the Island, the attitude and actions displayed by the Board and District should be of concern. Someday one of their actions will affect you directly, but the apathy of citizenry, which they count on, believe me, will cause you to be stymied in your attempts to get any satisfaction. The Board and District will engage in the good old ‘rope-a-dope’ defense: ignoring you until you quit from fatigue.
To quote Thomas Jefferson: " ... whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights"
This requires becoming informed and demanding that our officials do the right thing. This issue is as good a place to start as any.
VOTE NO on PROPOSITION 2!
Jim Mulcahy
posted April 26, 2008
The Grand Island School Board has two propositions for the voters to consider on May 20. The first is straightforward: continue the replacement cycle of the school buses. Jack Burns and his staff do an excellent job; they deserve our continued support.
Proposition 2 is a different story altogether. The enabling legislation: Section 3651 of the NY State Education law; would make a wonderful topic for a Political Science or Public Choice Theory Masters Thesis. What line of reasoning caused this nonsense to be enacted into law? It is a breeding ground for mischief or worse.
Turning to the issue at hand. The School board wants to be able to stuff funds into an account, collect interest on them, and then spend it as they see fit. I know that the law states that the projects must be approved by the voters. State Law says that now for all of the capital expenditures the school system undertakes, not just those funded through this slush fund. The law hasn’t prevented the Board from saying one thing and doing something else. A couple of examples will make my point: in 1999 the voters approved $18.4 million in expenditures that included new science labs and a new energy saving equipment. The latter cost was $2.145 million. The $18.4 million did NOT include expenditures on a 3rd gym at the high school.
The science labs were not built; the 3rd gym was. (I’m told that use of this gym is close to being by invitation only.) The energy saving project was found to be able to be funded via a long-term lease which doesn’t need voter approval. This freed up the $2.145 million; actually, it was $2.3 million that was finally funded, giving the district another $155,000 to spend on God knows what. They certainly never asked our permission or told anyone about it.
With overruns, they admit to spending $18.7 million but that excludes the $2.3 million on the energy lease. Ergo, they spent $21 million and still didn’t get any science labs. If it wasn’t for the EXCEL (= FREE MONEY) program of a year and a half ago, the labs still wouldn’t be built. The maintenance of the buildings was ignored until the FREE MONEY came along, also. Even here, there was sleight of hand. The voters were given a very specific list of projects to be funded in December, 2006. I asked if there were any other projects identified at the public hearing. I was told no, or at least, the Board and Mrs. Ingrasci wouldn’t divulge any when asked, point blank, if there were any. No sooner than the roofing job comes in below cost, than the District announces that the savings will be spent on backup generators. Where did this need appear from? It is clear that they wanted these all along but wouldn’t tell us about them.
My point is that the District officials can’t be trusted with our funds. They have lied, repeatedly, in the past about what they were doing with the funds we approved. When called on their lies, they engaged in smear campaigns. In other cases, they have not funded maintenance and repair items in the operating budget because that would either cause them to have to ask for higher taxes or, heaven forbid, make a choice about something to be deleted from the budget. Anyone who was at the public session in the Fall of 2006 and saw the pictures of the leaking roof had to be appalled. That didn’t happen overnight; the district knew about the roof’s problems long before then.
Further, why should today’s taxpayers prefund an account that they may not be around for? The most efficient and appropriate way to fund capital expenditures is to use BANs, bond anticipation notes, which are short-term funding vehicles to pay the contractors over the course of the project. The total amount outstanding grows over the course of the construction period. At the completion of the project the BANs are converted into long-term bonds that amortize over the expected life of the capital. This way those who benefit from the expenditures pay for them, not someone who may have lived here at some point in the past.
In summary, then, this is a terrible idea. In fact, it is a colossally terrible idea. The District has an abysmal track record of being good stewards with our money. And even if they did, this is an inefficient and inappropriate way to fund capital projects. VOTE NO on Proposition 2.
State Trooper staying put in GI Schools – Let Us Rejoice! (or maybe not)
Jim Mulcahy
posted April 26, 2008
The lead sentence in the Grand Island Record article about this topic in the Saturday April 12, 2008 edition read as follows:
“A plan to take state troopers out of the schools [suburban ones, at that] and into the cities to fight crime has been circumvented”
If Rip Van Winkle stirred from his slumber about now, he would be perplexed. Being a rational sort, he would have asked, “given that the State has limited resources, especially with the current budget situation, that need to be allocated, shouldn’t they be put to their highest valued uses?” Rip would be implying, of course, that police do more for the public’s well-being fighting crime in the highest crime areas, which assuredly are not suburban school systems.
Oh, Rip, you silly fellow, that is not how it works in the Alice in Wonderland world of the public schools. Listen to our very own superintendent, Mr. Christmann, opine on the topic. “We obviously support any effort [want to bet?] to do that [fight crime in the cities]”, said Grand Island Superintendent Robert Christmann. “But not at the expense of our school resource officer.”
The translation of this statement is that we will support anything that doesn’t discomfit us or force us to go directly to the taxpayers. As long as someone else picks up the tab he will support it. What a guy. Mr. Christmann is putting the school district’s interest way ahead of society’s overall well-being. Clearly, reducing crime in the cities where many live in fear of their lives is, or at least should be in a rational society, a higher priority than having a resource officer at the GI schools. If Mr. Christmann hadn’t noticed, the Grand Island police, Sheriff’s deputies, and State troopers are all within 5 minutes of any school. Keep in mind that the one resource officer can’t be at every school at once, either.
If having a resource officer was so important, why didn’t the District put it into the budget? If Grand Islanders think their kids are so malevolent then shouldn’t they pony up for this position, and not the rest of the State? The position only became an absolute necessity when it was funded by FREE MONEY (read: your tax dollar going round-trip through Albany). Prior to that, it wasn’t even on the radar screen.
The fact is that the District, and the other 119 districts that similarly benefited, are congenitally incapable of saying no to any expenditure of public funds. It is all about them. The sense of entitlement is suffocating.
The school district, as well as others, continues to bake, quite unnecessary, higher expenses into their cost structure that will cause severe dislocation when the State comes clean and says there isn’t any more money; we have finally killed the golden goose.
The State’s budget is not balanced; the funding sources identified to make believe that it is will actually reduce tax revenues. At some point the school districts in this state will have to stop putting their petty parochial interests over the common good. Unfortunately, I doubt if it will happen until the State gets a control board. Don’t think for a moment that they can’t get one. And it will be a beaut. It is called the financial markets. If investors stop buying NY state debt or start raising the rates they are willing to lend at, then the geniuses in Albany and all of their hangers-on will see first hand what a hard control board is all about.
I don’t know officer Pyc, so there is nothing personal in this. The issue is whether a school resource officer is an efficient expenditure of funds, not the particular individual. Officer Pyc will retire someday. But let me ask this, should a school resource officer in a suburban school system be paid the same amount as a State Trooper who tracks down a Bucky Phillips or other homicidal maniacs?
How do You Humiliate a Hamster?
Jim Mulcahy
posted April 17, 2008
This was a question the columnist George Will asked rhetorically in a 1970s article. He was referring to the then current idiocy taking place in the US Congress.
I recalled it as I have watched the idiocy displayed by the Grand Island School Board over the request by a parent to allow his child, who is home schooled, to partake in school system (non-interscholastic) extra-curricular activities.
My issue is the appalling way this request was handled. It shouldn?t matter which side one was on to be disgusted, yes disgusted, by the disgraceful behavior exhibited by the Board.
Last September, the parent spoke directly with Mr. Christmann about his child getting involved in these activities. Mr. Christmann said he would bring the request to the attention of the Board, but stated he was personally against it. (Boy, there?s a surprise.) The parent went to School Board meetings each month with no action, one way or the other, taken. It is clear that the Board?s strategy was to wait him out. He was expected to give up in despair as he saw the futility in dealing with the almighty School Board.
Well, he didn't. In January, he spoke again. I was at that meeting and voiced my support. Further, and, in the long run, more importantly, I spoke out about the cowardice that the Board exhibited. The parent deserved a straight answer; not a variation on a Chinese water torture. As I said to the Board, "put yourself in his shoes, would you like to be treated like this? Remember the Golden Rule." It clearly made no impression.
The Board finally scheduled a public hearing: the good old Pontius Pilate approach. Only one person spoke against allowing it. Even a teacher spoke in favor of it! Island residents who didn?t have children in the School System any longer or who never had any in it found the request reasonable. At the following Board meeting, the March 31 joint meeting with the Town Board, the School Board voted 4-3 in favor of allowing home schooled children to participate.
Now that they had voted in favor of allowing it you would think that they would move forward on it, but you would be wrong. Once safely back in the confines of Ransom Rd. their true colors spewed forth. Here is the IsledeGrande summary of the Board?s implementation plan. It would be impossible to make this up.
"The public session held regarding the Home Schooling/ Extracurricular Participation did not elicit negative comments. The consensus of all the school board members was that the home schooled students not ever displace any of the district students. All state and school policies must be adhered to. A policy to be made by district administration will be drawn up at the convenience of the district, not to interfere with the budget process at hand. A vote of three against: Seaman, Blair and Casey, and for: Franz, Hanna, Little and Bobeck was taken to create said policy. The policy would be on a one-school-year trial basis."
They appear to have been infected with John Kerry?s malady: "I was in favor of it, before I was against it."
Seriously, disgusting is the most polite term that can be used to describe this sequence of events. Everyone makes mistakes: in the heat of battle or argument people say or do things that they regret. While we all try to do well, we are human, and so we err. However, this was deliberate policy executed over a period of six plus months. There were numerous opportunities to do the right thing: give the parent a straight answer. Instead, the Board and the superintendent continued to act in as mean-spirited and as despicable a manner as I?ve seen from officials who purportedly are charged with instilling high standards and ideals in our children. They should be ashamed. At the very least, they owe the parent a public apology.
For those of you old enough to remember the Kingston Trio's song, Charlie on the MTA: "Citizens, this could happen to you!"
I understand Mr. Christmann has spoken with the parent since the edict from on high. He doesn?t want it to become a "media event". Don?t you just love it? First, they treat this parent shabbily, and then they hope no one notices. Well, guess what? The behavior of the Board and Mr. Christmann has made it into a media event.
As George Will asked, "How Do You Humiliate a Hamster?"
My Response to Mr. Christmann
Jim Mulcahy
posted January 20, 2008
Mr. Christmann responded to my letter of August 30 with 1,213 words, contained in an eight paragraph article. Most were totally unrelated to anything I had to say. I will address his responses by referring to the paragraphs by number.
Paragraph one is an appeal to authority: ‘As a superintendent of schools for the past nearly 20 years including my last seven months in Grand Island’. It doesn’t have any relevance to the points I raised which were specifically about finances. Paragraph two reminds me of the line from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice: “methinks thou dost protest too much.”
Paragraph three actually addresses a point I made. I said that the actual cost of the roofing job seemed low relative to the estimate used to justify its portion of the $4MM (yes, 4, not 3.9) capital project. Mr. Christmann gives some reasons why this could be the case, although I’m told by contractors that it seems to be a large variance. He states, “Roofing work right now proved to be very competitive and the low bid came in much less than anticipated in the estimates which were done many months earlier. This result, I would hope, would be seen as a good thing. The district has not for a second considered these funds to be anything other than a public trust to be used wisely and for the general purposes set forth to the residents and then approved by them in a public referendum.” (Italics added.) Typically, when a bill comes in for less than the estimate it is considered to be a good thing because one saves money. We are told that the savings is to be used for generators. These were never mentioned in the presentations to the public before the referendum. In fact, I asked what else was on the wish list that wasn’t included in the referendum package and was met with dead silence. Taking the savings, running out and spending them on something not included certainly doesn’t qualify as treating these funds as a public trust. Further, the phrase ‘general purposes set forth to the residents’ are weasel words used to excuse any use of the funds as the district sees fit. If one goes back to the referendum, the public was given a very clear list of the projects to be funded.
Paragraph four makes absolutely no sense in the context of responding to my article. I never said anything about the district doing anything illegal or improper. I have no idea what “rules” he is talking about. His next few sentences: ‘School districts are required to first borrow the money they need to pay the contractors and then the state reimburses them to the amount clearly shared with the public before the vote. The principle [sic] payments and interest costs are both eligible to receive the same state reimbursement percentages.’; just rephrases my statement about what a RAN, revenue anticipation note, is. What is the point?
Paragraph five is a beaut. Again, it does not address my point that while the 3.55% may be a low rate for a long term bond, it is not for a RAN which is a short-term borrowing. All of the filler about FICO scores and excellent credit ratings is irrelevant to the point. The last sentence, though, captures the mindset of district officials, succinctly. He states, “On that $2,000,000 note the district will earn nearly $32,000 in interest and those are dollars that will save the residents from paying more in local taxes.” Banks lend at higher rates than they borrow at. They are not eleemosynary institutions. They lend to us 3.55%, but presumably are borrowing it back from us at a lower rate. Are we to understand that via our state tax burden: income taxes, sales taxes, miscellaneous fees; we are paying out more in interest than is being earned at the local level. Maybe it warms the hearts of the district officials not to have to raise directly the funds they spend. From the taxpayers’ standpoint it is coming out of the left-hand pocket rather than the right-hand one. Further, we are paying more in total. If we don’t need the money right away, why not wait to borrow it? It should be clear, by now, that in any of these “gifts” from Albany we are net losers; downstate gets the preponderance of the vote-buying largess. In Grand Island’s specific case, we are an above average income community, as such, we are net subsidizers.
Paragraph six discusses my term, “FREE MONEY”. If Mr. Christmann had been around last Fall when the referendum was being put forth, he would understand my ironic use of the term. Despite what he says in this statement: “When these extra EXCEL dollars were added to the building project reimbursements already given to Grand Island by state law, the net cost to the Grand Island taxpayer was zero.”; the net cost was NOT zero. It may have been zero from the viewpoint of the district officials, but it is not from the taxpayer’s. Who does Mr. Christmann think is paying for this: Sheikh Yamani, the tooth fairy, who?
He says, “We follow the rules but we don’t make them.” A more accurate rendition is “We take advantage of the rules but we don’t make them.” The district didn’t have to spend the money. It could have organized other districts and said to Albany that: ‘this increased tax burden (to the taxpayer at the State level) is the very thing that is destroying the upstate economy. We need to live within our means. Stop the shell game.’ I’m sure that thought never occurred to anyone.
Paragraph seven refers to the health insurance issue. Mr. Christmann states, ‘The writer had that completely wrong.’ Maybe, but I had referenced Jodi Robinson’s report on the August 20 School Board meeting in which she said, ‘Health insurance cost increases are tentatively estimated to be over 1/4 of a million dollars more than budgeted by a state enacted mandate, none of which is covered by state funds.’ Jodi, from my experience, is meticulous and very careful in her reporting. If the cost increase had nothing to do with state mandates, why didn’t the district issue a correction earlier? It should have let Ms. Robinson know that she got it “completely wrong.”
Paragraph eight is more filler with usual sops to motherhood and apple pie thrown in for good measure.
I stand by what I have said. I don’t see where Mr. Christmann’s verbiage negates what I wrote.
Superintendent Robert Christmann Responds To Letter To Editor- 2007
Jim Mulcahy
[I have posted Mr. Christmann's response so that my response (above) to his remarks will have context. Needless to say, I don't find anything he says persuasive in contradicting my points. ~ Jim Mulcahy]
As a superintendent of schools for the past nearly 20 years including my last seven months in Grand Island I?ve come to appreciate and respect individual public opinion. I try very hard to be a good listener and to delay giving an opinion or making a decision until all the facts are known. Without the proper background into an issue quite often a person can reach a conclusion that?s incorrect.
It has not been my current practice nor will it become my future practice to respond to letters written in various local journalistic formats even when I believe that the writer has not taken sufficient time to understand the topic on which he or she chooses to comment. My priority remains to focus on academic improvements in our five schools in contrast to becoming a full time ?letter to the editor? responder. Despite that belief, I?m obligated to comment on the opinions from a Grand Island resident which were shared recently in the IsledeGrande. To leave so much misinformation unchallenged would not serve well the Grand Island community of which I?ve grown so much to appreciate. This letter then is an effort to put forth accurate unbiased facts related to the previous writers opinions.
All architects do the best job they can do in estimating the costs associated with the hundreds of individual items in large scale capital project work. Labor costs, materials costs, transportation costs, unforeseen problems, etc. all have to be considered when doing their estimates. All capital project work done by schools ultimately requires the use of sealed bids from the contractors. Confidential bids are opened one at a time and the lowest responsible bidder by law must be awarded the contract. Roofing work right now proved to be very competitive and the low bid came in much less than anticipated in the estimates which were done many months earlier. This result, I would hope, would be seen as a good thing. The district has not for a second considered these funds to be anything other than a public trust to be used wisely and for the general purposes set forth to the residents and then approved by them in a public referendum.
The New York State Legislature has developed the requirements that apply to all capital project work. It is our obligation to follow those legislative requirements as well as those from our State Education Department (SED). We will not do anything improper or illegal no matter how the writer personally feels about ?the rules?. School districts are required to first borrow the money they need to pay the contractors and then the state reimburses them to the amount clearly shared with the public before the vote. The principle payments and interest costs are both eligible to receive the same state reimbursement percentages. Those are the rules for every district.
Similar to what districts have to do when selecting contractors, we are required to put our borrowing out to bid. For our first $2,000,000 note, eight (8) separate financial institutions bid to purchase these notes. We?re obligated to select the lowest interest bid (again to save the residents money) and this time the low bid came back at a 3.55% interest rate. It was lower than what many other districts could have received because of our excellent credit ratings. As most people know, if you were to borrow money for a mortgage, you would be charged a much different interest rate based on your own personal credit rating or FICO score. Mortgage rates could run from 6% to 8% based on the credit rating of the borrower. The same guidelines affect school districts. The stronger your financial standing, the less interest you have to pay to borrow. Not only is the district paying a very low rate, the laws, which the legislature not us created, allow us to invest the money until our bills come due. On that $2,000,000 note the district will earn nearly $32,000 in interest and those are dollars that will save the residents from paying more in local taxes.
The writer?s use of the phrase ?FREE MONEY? is misleading. What can be stated is that the NYS Legislators passed a bill creating a new category of building aid called ?EXCEL?. It was their plan that these dollars would be used to help school districts keep up the infrastructure of their individual buildings while also helping to create badly needed construction jobs in the local economy. When these extra EXCEL dollars were added to the building project reimbursements already given to Grand Island by state law, the net cost to the Grand Island taxpayer was zero. If the writer disagrees with how this law was written or how building aid is determined by the NYS Legislature, my suggestion would be to express those concerns directly to our NYS assemblyman and state senator. They create and approve the legislation that controls all school building project work every where in NYS. We follow the rules but we don?t make them.
Finally, on the comments written about the additional $250,000 needed for our health insurance costs, the increase had absolutely nothing to do with our state mandates. There is no connection whatsoever between our health premium costs and Albany. The writer had that completely wrong. The charges are coming from our health insurance company, Independent Health, and the same one used by many thousands of workers. Our response to that possible increase has been to actively search for other less costly insurance plans. We won?t accept this type of increase without a good fight to get our current company to lower it or to switch to another less costly provider if there is one.
I?m pleased and proud to be associated with a board of education and district officials who place a very high priority on being financially conservative and spending tax dollars wisely. That?s exactly what we?ve accomplished with our capital project and with our 2007-08 school district financial budget. I?ve been in many meetings with construction workers, our financial advisors, and our school staff. I know how seriously we take our financial role and we?re also constantly listening to our board of education members who expect the most from our tax dollars. We?re all trying our best to complete the work that has to be done on our buildings, as well as educate our students and provide a fair wage to our staff while never forgetting that our schools belong to the Grand Island residents. Their support, financial and otherwise, is more deeply appreciated than we can begin to express. We expect to earn your trust every day. We also will continue our sincere efforts to listen to what each and every one of you has to say no matter what the topic is. If we can do things better, we want to be told what it is and how to do it. Again this type of response letter will not become a habit but I do want you know that if you have any questions or comments about anything to do with the Grand Island School District, I want to hear from you at 773-8801, my direct line. We encourage and appreciate your thoughts. Don?t hesitate or worry about expressing them. Our schools belong to you.
Robert W. Christmann
Superintendent of Schools
Posted September 6, 2007
Here We go Again
Jim Mulcahy
Written August 30, 2007
Here we go again! The School District releases some financial numbers and they raise more questions than they provide answers. Let’s start with my favorite topic, the capital improvement project. One can always find nonsense oozing out of these numbers.
The district announced, through Richard Gehring of Trautman Associates, the following. The budgeted $1.65MM for the roofing jobs came in under budget by $509,000! Let’s see: 509,000/1,650,000 = 30.8%, or 1,650,000/(1,650,000-509,000) = 144.61%. Either way that one looks at it the district mis-estimated by at least 30%. Good job, guys. It is difficult to believe that Trautman, a reputable firm, errs by this much for its private sector customers.
Rather than shrink the project, since we gave permission to do specific items as I recall, the district views these funds as walking around money for them to spend. This continues the district’s habit of asking for money for one thing and spending it elsewhere.
We read that the District borrowed $2MM for this project. Hmm, I thought this was to be “FREE MONEY” from the State (ignore the fact that we are the State). Let’s give Mr. Christmann and Mrs. Ingrasci the benefit of the doubt; that is, that the borrowing is a RAN, Revenue Anticipation Note. This is a short term borrowing, under a year, that recognizes a cash flow timing discrepancy between when the district’s bills have to be paid and when, in this case, Albany sends the money.
The district is patting themselves on the back that the only paid 3.55% to borrow ( is the interest expense part of the “FREE MONEY”). This, they say, is due to our great financial condition. Keep in mind that municipal financing is exempt from federal income taxation and if the investor is a NY state resident it is exempt from NY income taxation. Let’s be generous and assume the lender is from outside NY. The Federal tax rate is 35%. In order to obtain 3.55% after paying the federal income tax, one would have to earn 5.46%. This is a very, very high rate for this short a term for a good credit. If it is for a long term, say 15 or 20 years, then the rate is okay. But it can’t be for that long because we told, over and over again, that this project was to be funded with “FREE MONEY.”
Which is it?
Also, at last week’s board meeting it was announced (per Jodi Robinson’s column on Isledegrande.com) that ‘Health insurance cost increases are tentatively estimated to be over 1/4 of a million dollars more than budgeted by a state enacted mandate, none of which is covered by state funds.’ Really? What is the new mandate that is causing this? Did we (The district) fight this or did we get other Districts to join us in fighting another cram down from Albany? Obviously not. Why not?
We are asked to shovel money at the District but their accountability and stweardship are sorely lacking. ‘Tomorrow’ finally came for the City of Buffalo and Erie County, don’t think it can’t happen here.
Some Observations on Mr. Hanaka's Letter
Jim Mulcahy
Posted December 9, 2006
In last week’s Island Dispatch and on the IsledeGrande website Robert Hanaka wrote about the December 12th so-called Capital Budget vote. I say so-called because many of the items are really maintenance items that the District has ignored. He finds it disappointing that that there are letters that call into question the integrity of District personnel and Board members. I think he should be more disappointed at their stewardship and their treatment of those who call into question some of their decisions or even ask questions of information.
He, like the District, keeps repeating the “at no cost to the taxpayer” canard. Who does he or the District think is paying for this? He states that New York State (aka us!) will cover about 75% of the cost. Then, voila, Albany (aka us) found $2.6 billion of our tax dollars to give back to us via the EXCEL program. This isn’t chump change. The State is finding every way possible to spend our tax dollars so they won’t have to reduce taxes. If there wasn’t an EXCEL program and the State reduced our state taxes, and the School District raised them by an amount equal to these tax savings to pay for repairs, would he consider that to be “at no cost to the taxpayer.” Of course it is a cost to the taxpayer. The only good news from the District’s viewpoint is that they don’t have to raise it. Also, I’m still amazed that people continue to refer to this as a $3.9 million project, and not a $4 million one. $3,976,781 clearly rounds to $4 million, not $3.9 million. I’m sure any student who said it did on an exam would lose credit for that question. Why does the District persist in this inaccuracy?
The question is not whether to vote yes or no (I’m on record saying that it should be voted for) but why these items are included. The Middle School roof was in need of repair in 1999. It was included in the $18.4 million ($21 million actually spent) capital project we approved then. Why wasn’t it done as part of it? Further, anyone who went to the District’s information sessions saw the slide show of the deplorable condition of the roof. This didn’t just happen in the past three months. The Board knew this had to be done before the budget vote in May. The science labs were another capital project item included in the approved 1999 plan. Why are they being done now? Are we only doing it because we are getting “free money?” If the EXCEL funds weren’t available when was the Board planning on bringing this before the voters?
Mr. Hanaka points out that project costs tend to go up. I agree completely. In fact, in January of 2002 when I first raised the issue of the 1999 capital project before the Board I made that very point. I asked which items would be done since three years had past. My question was ignored. This is the reason many are planning on voting no: they can’t get answers from the District about how their tax dollars are going to be spent nor will the District give an accounting after the fact of what was purchased and at what price.
He is right that we have a wonderful group of children on the Island. They are bright, articulate, and talented. They are a joy and their parents are rightfully proud. However, that doesn’t imply that it is due to the performance of the District. Eric Hanushek, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and formerly a professor at the University of Rochester is an expert on education. He has made the observation that “most children in suburban school districts could spend four years in a closet and do well on the standardized tests.” The parents on Grand Island tend to be high achievers, also. Let’s give them some credit for their children. A couple of years ago the Buffalo News ranked districts, after taking into account the districts’ spending. Grand Island was middle of the pack.
Mr. Hanaka finds it “unfortunate that we find ourselves enveloped in cynicism so frequently.” The cynicism that exists emanates from the District that believes in the Muhammad Ali “rope-a-dope” approach: don’t respond and these individuals will eventually get tired and go away. Not always; some of us have the strength of our convictions. He should ask the District why the repainting of the pool and the recaulking of window sills, and repointing weren’t part of last spring’s budget if he wants to get an earful of cynicism. Then, if he isn’t totally frustrated with the duck and weave response, he should ask what other projects they discovered in their now-mandated inspection of the physical plant (I check my house without the nanny state requiring me to, as I’m sure most of you do, too). They have to identify items that can be expected to require expenditures within the next five years (I think I’m paraphrasing that right). He should ask for a list and the expected cost to the taxpayer. Trust me; you will not get an answer in an open forum.
There is nothing cynical or negative about asking the District about their spending decisions when they are spending our money. In fact, I would suggest that more people do it. In fact, they should demand answers. Most Islanders want the School District to be top tier; that is, our goals are all the same. Asking questions is a means of ensuring that the Board is headed in that direction, too. When one is stonewalled, though, one tends to become suspicious.
The School Board at the Town Board Presenting the Capital Budget Vote
Jim Mulcahy
Posted December 5, 2006
Note: This is the unedited version of a statement I made at last night’s Grand Island Town Board meeting. The Grand Island School Board was giving the last of its information presentations in advance of the vote on December 12th. As you will see, I am as unconvinced as ever that the new blood on the Board has made any difference.
I went to the information meeting the School Board ran last Tuesday evening. Some of you may have read about me in the Grand Island Record. My “hasty departure” was because I was disgusted, as I’ll explain.
I have friend who is a former Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is also a top-notch housing economist. He pointed out to me that the Buffalo MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) is the only MSA losing population! The fact that Erie and Niagara counties have the highest tax burden in the country may have something (everything) to do with it. I mention this because every time the Town Board wants to spend money their options are circumscribed because of the profligacy of the school system.
We are being asked to approve a $4M bond issue, to me $3.976M rounds to $4M, not $3.9M, but then I took math before the days of the “new math.” The big enticement to approve it is that it will be paid for with “free money”: another example of tooth fairy economics. But let’s leave that nonsense aside, for the moment.
When you look through the list of items to be taken care of with this funding request, many, if not most, appear to be operation and maintenance items, i.e., repainting the swimming pool and repointing the brick. Why haven’t these been part of the operating budget that we are asked to approve each May?
The only true capital items are the repairing of the Middle School roof and the science labs. These, while absolutely necessary, are a real sore spot with me. They were part of the 1999 project that was approved at $18.4M but for which the Board actually wound up spending in excess of $21M, but no science labs or roof repair.
They showed us pictures of the leaks in the Middle School. These didn’t happen in the past month: the board has known this roof has needed repair for at least 7 ½ years. Why are we fixing it now? Nothing was said last spring at budget time about this impending expenditure or capital request. Are we only fixing it because there is “free money?” My guess is yes, because it just popped up out of nowhere. What does this tell us about the stewardship over there.
We were told that the state now mandates every School Board to do an evaluation of their physical plant and identify those items that need to be done in the next five years. I asked why we needed a state mandate to make us evaluate our physical plant? Shouldn’t we be doing this without it being required? I know I check my house without the state telling me to do so.
The reason I left the last meeting in disgust was when I asked what I thought was a reasonable question: to wit, “what are the expenditures needed over the rest of this five year period? I was told they didn’t know. It was clear that they went down their punch list until they ran out of “free money.” I asked again, pointing out that they wouldn’t have known when putting the list together how many items would be included in this round of funding. What were the other items identified? And how much do you expect to come back to us for? Seemed reasonable to me. Mrs. Ingrasci continued to insult everyone in the room’s intelligence with her inane answers. That is when I left.
We need to know what is next. As I said earlier, most of these items belong, not in a capital budget, but an operating budget. They were excluded from the operating budgets so the board wouldn’t have to ask for more money and risk the budget being defeated. That would have meant actually making choices instead of the financial legerdemain they use, like the decrease last year in the energy budget!
If they continue to get away with not being held accountable for their spending, we can expect to be confronted with more of the low-rent extortion we have here today: vote for this or the roof will fall in. Again, none of these items should be in a 2006 capital budget request: the roof and the science labs were, we were led to believe, part of the 1999 project. All the rest of the items belong in each year’s operating budget.
Finally, as a matter of principle I still believe that a copy of the budget to be voted on should be put on the various websites on the Island: the school’s; the town’s; Iseldegrande; in either an excel or pdf format at least two weeks before any votes. We will only have ourselves to blame if we allow this stewardship or lack thereof to continue.
2006 Capital Budget Vote
Jim Mulcahy
Posted November 12, 2006
The Grand Island School Board has issued the required legal notice regarding their planned vote on a capital budget proposition. The vote is scheduled to take place on December 12th of this year. We are asked to approve a proposition that will allow them to obligate the taxpayers of Grand Island for a sum not to exceed $3,976,781. .
Please note the last part of the proposition: .
…all at a total estimated cost of $3,976,781, such cost being raised by tax upon the taxable property of said School District to be levied and collected in annual installments as provided in Section 416 of the Education Law, with such tax to be partially offset by State aid available therefore, and in anticipation of such tax, by obligations of said School District as may be necessary. .
It certainly sounds as if we are on the hook for these monies. The Assistant Superintendent for Finance has stated on more than one occasion that it “won’t cost us anything. The state will pay for it.” Of course, she can’t guarantee that which is why the proposition is worded as it is. Secondly, which statehouse should we be sending our thank you letters to for paying for this: Georgia, Connecticut, Arizona? If it isn’t going to cost us anything then it must be one of the other forty-nine states picking up the tab. If it is New York, then it is going to cost us. We are just digging into a different pocket. .
The critical point is that we need to DEMAND that the board tell us explicitly what they propose to spend the money on. Notice that they didn’t come up with a sum that was rounded to the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Clearly, this sum was developed from evaluating specific projects. What are they? The board shouldn’t be embarrassed to tell us. If they are, we have serious problems..
Why do I say we need to demand a detailed accounting? In 1999, we gave approval for them to spend up to $18.4 million. In actual fact, when they finally got around to the projects they spent over $21 million. They spent the money on items that weren’t in the proposal, like a third gym (which, I’m told, only the elite are allowed to use, not the everyday student), and excised items that were in it, like the science labs. They proceeded to deny there were specific plans. .
Before we vote, we should be provided a listing of each and every project and its specific cost. This total should come to the $3,976,781. After the projects are completed we should be provided the actual sums spent on each project and what we received. Only if we receive this will we be able to compare it to what we were told prior to the vote. Without this, we cannot keep the Board honest. If you don’t think that the School Board needs some serious adult supervision, please scroll down and read more of my postings about their behavior.
Feeling Good
Jim Mulcahy
Posted October 2, 2006
Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, has made the observation that individuals spend their own money most carefully on themselves, and less so on others. Further, they spend someone else’s money even less carefully on that individual than they do their own. Finally, an individual spends someone else’s money on a third party the least carefully of all. This, he says, is the essence of government spending, and why it is so wasteful.
The scenario continues to get replayed by our Grand Island School Board. These folks never seem to be able to spend enough money, very little of which is their own. I have pointed in the past that I felt that having a principal at Sidway elementary school (kindergarteners and first-graders only) was an unnecessary expense. In fact, the previous occupant of that position, Frank Cannata, was paid $97,500 plus benefits per year. The board would never explain how they could justify that sum. It is a perfect example of Friedman’s view about the spending other people’s money.
We do have, though, a measuring rod to compare whether or not $97,500 is more than necessary to obtain the services of a principal. In the City of Buffalo, the school system has been plagued by unruly and belligerent children. I refuse to call them students. In response to the attacks on students and teachers, the district opened an “alternative” school to quarantine these hoodlums. The Buffalo News in July mentioned that a principal had been hired at $76,000+ per year.
Now, on the one hand we have a principal on Grand Island paid $97,500 for a job which Cannata, himself, described as ‘the best job in the district: there are no discipline problems or curriculum issues.’ On the other hand, the City of Buffalo hires a woman to preside over controlled chaos for $76,000. There is something wrong with this picture. Grand Island doesn’t seem to care about whether or not their expenses are in line with what it takes to acquire talent.
There is a second observation for comparison. Grand Island is searching for a new superintendent to replace Tom Ramming who made over $150,000. The superintendent of the Ken-Ton School District resigned recently to accept the same position in Greece, a Rochester suburb. The Buffalo News article noted that the Ken-Ton superintendent was making $145,000. The Ken-Ton district has over 4,600 students while Grand Island has about 3,300. Further, Ken-Ton is a more complicated district with two high schools and numerous grammar and middle schools.
The Grand Island superintendent was paid more than the Ken-Ton superintendent for managing a much smaller student body and a less complicated physical plant. Again, the Grand Island School Board is contemptuous of the taxpayers as they lavish big salaries on these administrators.
Again, the board is in search mode to replace Ramming. Why don’t they offer the position at $120,000? Trust me, in Western New York that is an excellent salary. Further, the teachers’ contract expires next year. Can we expect the board to show any fiscal responsibility in their negotiations? To ask it is to answer it. That said, I bet they wouldn’t be so lavish if they had to personally pay any premium to their pals.
Grand Island School District’s Capital Project – the Debacle Continues
Jim Mulcahy
Posted June 5, 2006
There was a lot of glad-handing and high fives that the District gave itself after it won the budget vote last month. Because of the “echo” you may have missed the request at the following board meeting to replace All-Weather Roofing as the contractor of record on the roofing portion of the capital project. Big deal, you may say. Well, in fact, it is.
The capital project, phase II, contracts were awarded in August, 2002. The roof should have been in place in 2003. Here we are in 2006 and it still has problems. Why? It’s a new roof. We were told that “we are on top of this project.” That’s so no one can get a look at it. Anyone who owns or lives in a house, or a tent, for that matter, knows that if there are problems with the roof, eventually, sooner rather than later, there will be all sorts of interior problems. What management process allowed this to fester this long?
This summer, presumably, the problem(s) will be fixed. At what cost, though, and who pays? It would be interesting to know if All-Weather was bonded. If not, why not? If they weren’t, the District, aka the taxpayers, will have to pay for it. Why shouldn’t those in charge pay for it? Why should we, the taxpayers, have to? They didn’t manage the project properly. The acoustics in the music room were atrocious. They need(ed) to be redone. The gym is only for the “elect”, I’m told. Shouldn’t they be held responsible for their actions?
As I have written before, this project was a scandal from the very beginning. We were asked to vote on one set plans, but the board saw fit to change them substantially: adding a gym and eliminating science labs to name the most obvious. Eliminating the science labs was the easy choice. It would have been difficult to come back to the taxpayers and ask for a third gym, but who could turn down science labs? This is a classic bait and switch operation. (Where is Eliot Spitzer when you really need him?)
It is bad enough that the project still isn’t completely done seven years after voter approval, but the costs are far in excess of what was approved. “How can you say that,” you ask? We approved $18.4 million. The District acknowledges spending at least $18.87 million. However, there is the little item of the Phase I energy conservation component of the project. The District, partly to deflect attention away from the mess they were creating on the rest of the project, did the energy conservation part first. At no time, though, did they ever say that it was not part and parcel of the $18.4 million project we approved. Keep in mind that it cost $2,145,000 for this.
The District found out that there is a loophole in NY State law big enough to drive a Mack truck through. It is this: a lease, no matter of what size, does not require voter approval. This is because it is considered an annual appropriation and can be reneged on at any time; bonds are obligations that can only be avoided in bankruptcy. This law/rule was obviously intended for the leasing of cars, mimeograph machines, etc. The public would go nuts having to rush over to approve $500, three-year leases. I doubt very much it was intended for multi-million dollar, fifteen year leases.
Whether this is or isn’t an appropriate means, it is legal. However, the School District asked us to provide funds via a capital program to pay for this. I doubt if it would have passed if the District was upfront about it and said: “we intend to finance the energy portion through a different mechanism, thus freeing these funds for us to spend elsewhere.” We need to keep in mind that whether everything was funds via a lease or via a bond issue, the taxpayers of Grand Island are on the hook for the full amount, all $21+ million!
At what point are we going to say “enough!” We need to have the full Board of Education do the honorable thing and resign. We need to hold new elections with no one who has been a Board member in the past decade allowed to run. Children are compelled to spend thirteen years in the school system. We should at least see that the monies we spend on them are spent wisely.
One Set of Rules for Us, and Another for the School District.
Jim Mulcahy
Posted June 5, 2006
Below is part of the statement the Superintendent issued after the quitting/dismissal of school bus driver Mrs. Thompson in November, 2004. It transpired that she stated some facts about stem-cell research to her charges as she drove them home.
Board of Education policy and common sense require the School District and its employees to remain politically neutral. There is a difference between what someone may say in the public park and what a school employee can say to a captive audience of elementary children on a bus. Superintendent Dr. Thomas Ramming said, “We teach about controversial topics in the classroom, not on the school bus.”
It states that both policy and common sense require the School District and its employees remain politically neutral. Further, they recognize the difference between someone saying something in a public park where one can walk away at no cost and in a setting where the audience is captive, with potential untoward consequences if they disagreed, Seems reasonable. No one likes being compelled to listen to views that don’t want to hear at the time. It is even more annoying if you can’t, in any meaningful way, protest without incurring the wrath of the speaker(s).
During the lead-up to the school budget vote last month, students in the high school were pressured, subtly, to wear “vote yes” buttons. So much for the policy of staying politically neutral. The teachers also threatened students with tales of the “no-vote hobgoblins” which told of the nasty, brutish, and short state of affairs that would exist in the school offerings. In this situation we have a captive audience who are being pressured by individuals who can affect grades, recommendations, etc.
Where is the common sense and political neutrality that Dr. Ramming spoke of? The School District has as its over-riding goal self-aggrandisement and enrichment regardless of its consequences for anyone else. I can hear them say that this is in the best capitalist tradition. Not really. Capitalism, or more specifically, free markets, require the possibility of new entrants into the market and the elimination of existing suppliers if they don’t perform as well as others. If the School District and its employees want to have a true, full-blown voucher system, then they are entitled to all they earn. In the obscene monopoly situation that exists today, they aren’t.
Given the hypocrisy of these people how can we trust them to teach anyone anything?
Let’s have a Revote!
Jim Mulcahy
Posted 4/14/06
The Grand Island (NY) school budget passed, barely: 2,065 for, 1,999 against. Only 50.8% of the voters were in favor. Last year when 62.1% were opposed, there was a clamor for a revote by the losing side. Why shouldn’t we have a revote this year? Clearly, if a rout like last year didn’t suffice to express the will of the people, surely this year’s result doesn’t.
We all know the reason there won’t be one. It is all about the school system getting its own way. They throw out any vote in which they lose, no matter how badly. They keep any vote in which they win. This is a classic “heads I win, tails you lose” approach. As kids we used that phrase knowing that it was a dishonest, unscrupulous way of tossing a coin. It is, though, the modus operandi of the schools.
It is pathetic that they have to resort to holding concerts the night of the voting and have students accosting voters as they arrive to vote. In addition, there is the spectacle of the schools having students wear “vote yes” buttons. This is crass intimidation. What if the student opposed the vote? Given the bullying that goes on, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that retribution, of some form, would occur.
If the school system believed in their case they shouldn’t have to do this. The blunt fact is that the school system’s budget is a disgrace and they know it. All of the talk about “it’s for the children” is a lot of hooey. If they really cared about the children they wouldn’t keep larding up the administrative expenses. Neither would they have squandered millions of the capital project’s dollars. They don’t know how to operate a $40 million plus business, nor do they seem to care to learn (how ironic in an educational setting).
Once again, the voters were cowed into believing that the sky would fall in if they didn’t give the district more money to play with. Unfortunately, every year that goes by without corrective actions taken means that when the day of reckoning finally arrives, as it will, the adjustment will be that much more severe. It happened at the steel companies; it is happening at Delphi and other auto industry firms; it is happening in Buffalo and Erie County; and it will happen here.
We are told that without ever-increasing expenditures, our children won’t be able to stay here in WNY. Guess what, the Buffalo MSA is the only major one losing population [a former Asst. Sec. of HUD informed me of this fact]. People are leaving because of no jobs, not lack of skills. With our tax, including the school tax, and regulatory structures no rational business will set up shop here. Of the firms currently here, if they stop being locally-owned, they will be gone without massive concessions. It is hard to justify the premium to stay here if one doesn’t have any affection for the area.
We need to move the vote from the school property to a neutral site such as the library or town hall. Only in this way can the playing field be leveled.
The school system is supposed to be educating our children. Instead, it has been reduced to self-serving entity whose primary goal is the preservation of its rather substantial perks. This is the real tragedy.
Mr. Flynn’s criticisms are weak
Jim Mulcahy
Posted 4/14/06
In the May 5, 2006, edition of the Grand Island (NY) Dispatch, there was a letter to the editor by Bryan Flynn. He chides other letter writers to “do a little research …., so they wouldn’t sound so ignorant.” Let’s check his article for clarity and accuracy.
He says the first mistake in their article is “the implication that teachers are paid for 12 months but only work for 9.” Really, why is that a mistake? What do you call it when someone has an annual salary, but works 186 days? Is Mr. Flynn saying that the teachers could be required to teach summer school, for instance, without any additional pay? I don’t think so. It was clear what the point was that the authors were trying to make: teachers earn a salary above the average for the area, even though they work 75% as much as most others do.
I must admit I am mystified how dividing one’s salary into 26 paychecks, rather than 22 paychecks increases one’s ability to pay bills. It sounds like a rhapsody on the Yogi Berra line when asked if he wanted the pizza cut into 6 or 8 pieces, he said, “6, I can’t eat 8!”
He says no one is complaining about other public sector pensions. But they are. What does Mr. Flynn think the budget crisis in the county and the need for a Control Board in Buffalo were all about? Even Business Week magazine had a front page article about the looming pension crisis since they are going to bankrupt many communities. The issue is that the people negotiating for the taxpayer aren’t on the hook financially for the decisions they make.
Mr. Flynn takes issue with the pay increases, relative to the rate of inflation. He says the pay increase is 3% in the current contract. Inflation has been running at a 2.75% over the March 2002 –March 2006 period, basically the time frame the contract has been in place. The issue is that every teacher gets this increase regardless of performance. In the private sector, performance counts.
It would be naïve in the extreme to think that the teachers didn’t have an enormous influence in getting a second vote on the budget last year.
His selection of the word “choice” in his last paragraph is ironic. He says “the U.S. is a country full of choices.” It certainly is. Just go into a supermarket and see the range of toothpastes, beers, cereals, etc. that one can choose from. The choices are abundant if one wanders through any shopping mall. It doesn’t matter where one lives. If you don’t like Tops, you can always patronize Wegman’s. There is one area, though, where choice doesn’t exist: the public school system. One must purchase what is served up in the community where one lives. You are required to buy it in a quantity determined for you. If you choose to patronize a private school, you still have to purchase the public school quantity. It is as if when opting to patronize Wegman’s you still had to send Tops a check. There is no choice. One is compelled at the point of (the Sheriff’s) gun to purchase what others believe you should buy.
Mr. Flynn needs to take his own advice to heart.
Needs, Wants, Must Haves in the School Budget or, to Put It More Forthrightly: A Guilt Trip to Get Others to Subsidize my Kid.
Jim Mulcahy
Posted 4/14/06
There have been a number of Letters to the Editors of the various publications on Grand Island recently concerning the upcoming vote on the school budget. In some cases the arguments recognize a fact but it is clear the writer doesn’t understand the underlying dynamics. In others, the argument is flat wrong. Also, in others, there is a selective use of statistics (provided, of course, by the District) to support their position.
One letter writer observes that we continue to fill-up our autos even though the price is going up. Basic economics states that the demand for a product depends positively on income levels (rising around the world) and on the size of the market (again, growing world-wide). Both factors are causing the price to increase. Controlling for these influences, though, people are conserving on their use of petroleum as the price rises. Another example given is dining out. Prices are higher in restaurants but people still patronize them. Again, if incomes are rising faster than prices, people will purchase more evenings out. If incomes are rising slower than prices we may dine out less often or eat less expensive entrees. Do we know what they are buying? Pasta dishes seem to move well. They tend to be among the lower-priced. The point I am making is that one can’t/shouldn’t extrapolate from an event to a behavioral dictum.
The writer then turns to the school budget. We are accused of being inconsistent because we stand up to the higher prices implied in the budget, when we “just shrug our shoulders and pay” in the other instances. Not at all, just as we conserve on gas and dinners when the price increase is greater than the increase in our incomes, we don’t want to have increases in spending on the school budget in excess of the increase in our income. It is a little more heated, if you will, with the budget for an obvious reason: one is compelled at the point of a gun to buy a pre-determined amount of school budget. It is not possible to switch from strip steak to pasta, or buy the 10 oz. steak instead of the 12 oz. one.
Other writers have asserted that it is a “well-known fact” that smaller class sizes are more conducive to learning. The implication is that with smaller class sizes students will do better. The academic research on this does not support this “fact” at all. The assertion is nothing more than an urban legend that has been repeated ad nauseam by the teachers’ union. The fact that they have a vested interest in smaller class sizes seems to be conveniently overlooked. We are also told that we get real value for our tax dollar. It is stated that it costs, on average, over $13,000 per year to educate a child in NYS. Grand Island does it for under $11,000, we are told. Grand Island has fewer than 3300 pupils in the system. Using 3300 as our denominator and the $42.2 million in annual budget in the numerator, we get $12,727. Granted, this is somewhat lower than the state average, but where does the $11,000 figure come from? One can always pick and choose components of the budget to get a favorable result. Last year when the Buffalo News did their comparison of school districts’ expenditures and performance, Grand Island ranked higher on expenditures than it did on performance. I don’t recall the District rebutting this article.
The basic thrust of all of the articles is that without a massive infusion of more tax dollars the children of Grand Island will get an inferior education. This argument is made in spite of the evidence that we spend substantial amounts on the school system. The taxpayers who are concerned about the high and rising tax bills are made to feel guilty about not forking over even more money. The proponents of more spending do not seem to believe that any alternative is possible. Instead they want everyone to subsidize their child. Here are three alternatives: 1) send your child to a private school; 2) hire a tutor – the ultimate in small class sizes; and 3) donate to the school system. There is nothing that prevents someone from giving more than legally mandated amount to the schools. If you think they are under-funded, put your money where your mouth is. Don’t coerce your neighbor into funding your vision.
Notice that above I said ‘spend substantial amounts on the school system’, not on education. There is a very big difference. It is my firm belief that the School District has no ability to manage a $42 million enterprise. They haven’t seen an expense they didn’t want to increase. The Board and superintendent complain, in their best Jake Blue imitations, “It ain’t our fault” that pension expense is up, salary expense is up, health care expense is up, etc. Who, pray tell, negotiated the contracts? Who took advantage of the stock market bubble in the late 1990s to reduce contributions to the pension fund? On that point, I don’t recall the district saying that taxes could be cut or minimized due to the lower funding obligation. This was “free money” to be spent elsewhere.
As I have pointed out in the past, there is no need for a principal at Sidway. The former principal, Frank Cannata, was paid $97,500 plus benefits. There are two secretaries there. One has been out on sick leave. The other still isn’t worked to capacity. Every administrator at the district office has their own secretary. Why? There is a switchboard receptionist. In this day and age of voicemail, email, word processing packages, databases, and spreadsheets, what do these people do all day? We have an asst. superintendent of curriculum being paid $115,000 plus benefits. Why is this position necessary? The State sets the curriculum; we have a superintendent; principals, asst. principals, dept. heads, and teachers. Can’t they figure it out? Further, the curriculum is set before school starts in the fall. Why can’t the superintendent do this from June-August? We have an asst. superintendent of finance being paid $111,000 plus benefits. We also have a treasurer and a bookkeeper. The budget is a January to March exercise. The line items don’t change. Why can’t the superintendent with a subset of the Board do this?
The Board and the administration’s stewardship of the capital project was disgraceful. We were asked to approve an $18.4 million capital improvements plan in 1999 which included $2.145 million for energy projects. The total cost of the projects was $18.9 million due to cost overruns. However, this cost figure excludes the $2.145 million for the energy projects since they were financed by a long-term lease. Leases don’t count against the capital account. This is accounting legerdemain that would embarrass Enron or Adelphia. The district spent over $21 million even though they had approval to spend $18.4 million. Even the students recognized that the science labs were short-changed at the expense of the new music room (with lousy acoustics that need to be corrected); a third gym (which wasn’t even in the plans shown to the taxpayers in 1999); and the (train shed)canopy over the entrance to the high School. Despite the over-spending they couldn’t upgrade the science labs. These are people you want to give more money to spend? (See below: Grand Island Schools Capital Project, January 11, 2005, for a more complete discussion of this incompetence.)
The fact of the matter is that the school system administrators are just that: administrators. They are not managers. They have no experience outside of the school system or other non-profit operations. As such, they do not have any metric with which to compare the efficiency of their operations. Instead, they turn with a vengeance against anyone who challenges their management or lack thereof. Parents of students want more of everything. This is understandable: wants are limitless. Other taxpayers want limits on the spending. Again this is understandable: resources are limited. My contention is that the school system makes no attempt to be efficient. If the waste in the system was minimized, that would free up resources. The district, though, digs in its heels at the very thought of evaluating its operations. It insults anyone who challenges their stewardship. Only a government enterprise could be this inefficient and survive.
A Golden Opportunity - 2006
By Jim Mulcahy
Posted Monday, January 30, 2006
Dr. Ramming announced his resignation as superintendent of the Grand Island School District, effective July 1. This presents the School Board with an excellent opportunity to rethink how the school system is managed.
Currently, the District, like every other one, is administered by former teachers who have taken some administration courses. They aren’t managers: people don’t go into teaching because they want to run a business. The Grand Island School System is a business; a rather good-size business with expenditures of more than $42 million per year. It is administered by individuals who are well intentioned but do not have the experience in running a real business, that is, one that could go broke. Without this experience, they don’t have any way of measuring the operating efficiency of the District.
What the District needs is someone with an MBA who understands teaching to be in charge. This would bring a much needed discipline to the budgeting process and, consequently, to the overall operation of the District. It is clear that the current system has no checks or balances to the budgeting process. Who can forget last year’s legerdemain to get a “no tax increase”, oops, a “no tax-rate increase” budget? The appalling deceit of the energy component of the budget blew up in the District’s face. If it wasn’t for the large overrun we, the taxpayers, would never have even been aware of this.
Even when the operation isn’t as deceitful as last year’s budget process was, it still leaves much to be desired. In 1979 (this lack of financial competence is of long-standing) the District put in a dual-fuel heating system at Kaegebein, replacing a perfectly good heating unit. This was in the days of natural gas shortages. The dual-fuel capability would allow the school to operate if there were curtailments of natural gas. I pointed out that schools were a priority one customer, similar to hospitals and other government agencies. This meant that schools would be among the last curtailed. If the schools were ever curtailed it would mean that it was so cold outside that no parent would send their kid to school anyway. There are other examples.
My point is not to rehash the past, but to emphasize the need for a manager who will recognize the need for trade-offs. It doesn’t appear that the current process has any mechanism to evaluate options and choose amongst them. The difficulty is that the administrators are not business people who are trained and experienced in making financial decisions. The District can’t provide every possible opportunity to the children. Everyone runs their own household by recognizing the need to make choices. So should the District. It needs someone who knows how to say no.
I’m sure that this idea will be dismissed out of hand by the School Board. Possibly the Board will state that NYS law requires the superintendent to be an educator. Translated, this means someone who is a lifer in the school systems and has taken the administration courses that keep college level education departments in business. If it is only a law that prevents having a real manager, what is the Board doing to get it changed? If there is no law impeding this, the Board should go this route. With the school tax representing about 60% of our property taxes, it is imperative that we get our monies worth. Here is an opportunity for the Board to bring some real management into an enterprise that has been sorely lacking in management and budgeting skills.
It’s Déjà vu All Over Again - 2005
By Jim Mulcahy
Posted Tuesday, October 4, 2005
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." ~ Lewis Carroll
It seems that a number of our fellow taxpayers are scratching their heads as they peruse their recent school tax bills. They had expected to have the same tax bill as last year, since the Budget approved in June was touted as having ‘no tax increase’. The School System has had to post an explanation on their website as to why ‘no tax increase’ didn’t mean no tax increase.
Their answer is that the Board only guaranteed that the tax rate would be held constant. The citizenry may be excused for thinking that we were lead to believe that there wasn’t going to be an increase in their tax bill. Below is the headline and first paragraph of the Board’s decision to put forth a budget that “does not raise taxes” – their words. As you can see the headline reads “…does not raise taxes”. Mr. Goris’ comment at the end of the paragraph: “- no tax increase.” reinforces the impression that our tax bills were going to remain constant. Only once does the phrase “tax rate” appear.
Press Release
June 2, 2005
Amended Budget Does Not Raise Taxes
The Grand Island Board of Education has decided to place a new budget, which does not raise the tax rate, before the voters later this month. This decision was reached after the Board listened to a presentation by district administrators about budget scenarios and possible cuts. The presentation was followed by a period of public comment, where 22 speakers addressed the Board. Most urged the Board to draft a new budget that maintained strong academic, music, art, and sports programs but did not raise taxes. The Board then went to work, cutting $392,619 from the budget that was rejected by the voters on May 17. Dave Goris, Board President, stated, “The amended budget preserves most of what the community values – academics, low K-4 class sizes, sports, music, and art – while giving those who addressed the Board on Tuesday what they asked for – no tax increase.” A list of the cuts that were made is found below.
The recent column on the School District website states that there are two variables that determine the tax bill: 1) the tax rate and 2) the assessed value of the property. They are rationalizing the increase by saying that the assessed value is higher. The example shown has the effective assessed value going up. This higher amount is multiplied by the so-called 0% increase tax rate. Surprise, surprise: one gets a larger amount than if the assessed value were smaller. Brilliant! For an individual property this is true, if there had been improvements made in the preceding year, but in the aggregate there is a third component that is fixed: the total budget that was approved. The algebra is simple: (tax rate) * (total assessed value) = budget. The budget is fixed (isn’t it?), so a higher assessed value would imply a lower tax rate.
You will notice that the approved budget amount is conveniently ignored in their discussion. This is the dirty little secret of property taxes. As long as the total assessed valuation in the community is increasing the taxing entity rakes in more revenue than they told the taxpayers they needed to run the place. As such, the School District is going to have more money to spend than was budgeted for or approved. So much for cuts to get a zero tax increase. The District will respond that the State Equalization Rate is different and that the Star Credit adjustment is different. But, so what? They asked for and received voter support for a fixed amount of money. Whether one doubles the assessed valuation and halves the tax rate or vice versa, the revenues collected should equal the amount approved.
The Board and District officials need to be asked why they weren’t consistent in using the phrase “no tax rate increase” rather than saying more often than not, “no tax increase”? We have a right to know how much additional revenue they are collecting versus what was assumed in the budget process; that is, how much higher is the actual assessed valuation compared to the assessed valuation that was used to determine the 0% increase tax rate? Did anyone on the Board or in the Administration realize that this was going to occur? If yes, why wasn’t anyone told?
Last Spring I said that the revised budget that was subsequently approved was a slap in our faces. I said that one would never be able to determine if there were cuts. At that time I chose not to respond to the vilification directed at me. I don’t intend to start now. However, it is clear that the points I made were correct with respect to the Board and District’s fiduciary stewardship.
Curses, Caught In The Act! (Again, I may add.) - 2005
By Jim Mulcahy
Posted Thursday, September 15, 2005
In the Wednesday, September 7, 2005, edition of the Buffalo News on page B3, there is news brief about the Grand Island Schools. It is a small, innocuous piece, so you may have missed it. It seems that the increase in energy costs due to hurricane Katrina may cause the District’s energy costs to be forty percent higher than budgeted for. As an economist and finance expert working in the energy field in one capacity or another for a decade, I appreciate the difficulty in forecasting prices. As such, the fact that the district’s costs were going to be higher than projected in March and April wouldn’t be especially newsworthy: a rhapsody on dog bites man theme.
However, the third paragraph, which I’m sure the District officials would have rather not seen printed, points out the budget legerdemain that I spoke of this spring as they went through contortions to present a balanced budget. Specifically, the district spent $960,000 on energy costs in the 2004-2005 fiscal year which ended June 30, 2005. Guess how much they budgeted for this year? If you haven’t seen the News article, I’m sure, knowing what we all know about where energy prices have been trending for the past year, that everyone would have come up with an amount in excess of $960,000. Most would probably have estimated the amount to be noticeably larger. Au contraire! They budgeted, I’m not making this up – it is in paragraph three of the News article, $956,000. Huh? What line of reasoning would cause one to budget a smaller amount, given what we have experienced with prices in the preceding year. To wit: the wellhead price of natural gas was higher in every month of their last fiscal year than in the corresponding month of the previous one, except for one month where it was $.01 lower.
Being skeptical of their budgeting process, I have an answer. This was an area where they could cut the budget so as to make the zero percent property tax goal. If prices went up, that wouldn’t be their fault. I would agree if the budget process hadn’t been such a sham. They had to know that the $956,000 figure was ridiculously low. (Mr. Dallessandro is transportation manager of a south towns school district. I wonder what they budgeted, or he requested, and why.) The only reason to do that was to present a budget that wouldn’t imply a tax hike. They could have been honest and put in a reasonable estimate, but that would have required them to make real cuts. As I said last June, the revised budget was a slap in our faces. Little did I know at the time just what sort of fiscal chicanery was going on.
Given this episode, I believe we must require the Board to put copies of the budget that we are to vote on in the public library and at Town Hall thirty days in advance of the vote as well as put PDF files on their website and the Isledegrande.com website. Going the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) route is not acceptable as there are too many ways for them to stall and delay. Our school taxes are the largest component of our property taxes. If we really want to protect the values of our properties and educate the children, we need to have much more honest stewardship than this.
This Is A Slap In The Face - 2005
By James M. Mulcahy
Posted June 6, 2005
After the defeat of the school budget on May 17th, Mr. Ramming, the superintendent, asserted that the proposed tax increase wasn’t a slap in the face of the tax payers. The amended budget being proposed by the School Board is a slap in the face. One has to wonder how well they understand the budget that they want to saddle the taxpayers with.
The budget for our consideration on June 28th has $392,619 of cuts that implies no increase to the property tax rate. Below are the proposed cuts.
BUDGET CUTS FOR REVOTE
EQUIPMENT $111,431.00
RETIREMENT SAVINGS $63,268.00
FIELD TRIPS – SCHOOL BASED $12,500.00
MAIL CARRIER - RED. HOURS $12,820.00
4 CLEANERS $80,000.00
NURSE TO HALF-TIME $14,100.00
TRAVEL AND CONFERENCE $12,500.00
BOCES – STAFF DEVELOPMENT $23,000.00
MUSIC SUPPLIES $10,000.00
ATHLETICS/INTRAMURALS $25,000.00
COMMUNICATION BUDGET $5,000.00
BOCES SPEECH REDUCED $23,000.00
TOTAL CUTS $392,619.00
BUDGET TOTAL FOR REVOTE $42,764,295.00
Notice anything? The “cuts” amount to 0.9% of the budget. Notice anything else? I know the suspense is killing you. There are no; as in none; zero; nada; cuts in the administrative budget. The disgusting sense of entitlement continues apace. No sharing of secretaries is even being proposed.
It is transparently clear: the children are NOT the main priority of this administration. Their cushy existence is their only concern. What is the Board thinking? I’ve identified on numerous occasions hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be cut without impacting the children. Instead we are being told that if we don’t approve this travesty that we are anti-children and that we will revert to the stone age.
In a letter last week, a Mr. Kaplan pointed out that our reserve should be $800,000. (This is the current amount.) It was only $7,000 three years ago. Keep in mind that many of the current Board were responsible for the draining of the reserve. Does anyone really believe that they will see that spending is kept under control?
Dollars to donuts, at the end of the next fiscal year none of these cuts will have been carried through. Who could tell? Does anyone know what the original amount was? If not, how can you tell if the cuts were implemented, even assuming they showed us the books at the end of the year? Want to bet that the reserve will be used to fund these things?
In my opinion, it is a moral obligation to vote no on this budget. I know some who voted no in May are going wobbly because there is no tax increase. They are worried about the vengeance that the administration will wreak on the children if they don’t get their way. Don’t blink. Force the issue: either the Board and administration are truly for the children or they are not. By voting no on the budget, their hand will be forced. If they do the right thing, great. If not, they should be removed, post haste.
Again, the new, improved budget IS a slap in our faces. They are counting on fatigue and a zero increase in the tax rate to slide this abomination through. There are no meaningful cuts. Next year we will be asked to increase this year’s bloated budget because there was no increase in 2005. This is pathetic. No business or household can run like this. The sacred cow status must end. The school system is impervious to all of the economic forces that we face. It is about time they received a little dose of reality.
Get your friends, come out and vote no. It won’t be the end of the world. The defeat of the European Constitution by the French and Dutch sent a clear message to the privileged class: the high priesthood days are over. Do the same here on Grand Island.
Budget Defeat a Wake up Call [Yeah, right!] - May 2005
By James Mulcahy
Posted 5/31/05
“Budget Defeat a Wake up Call” was the headline of the lead article on the School System’s web site last Thursday. It appears, though, that whoever wrote the headline either didn’t read the article or hoped that no one else would. The article gave an excellent impersonation of Jake Blue of the Blues Brothers: “It isn’t our fault!”
The defeat was blamed on Erie County’s tax woes. Really? Only three school budgets lost last Tuesday. Only one, Grand Island, had the voters do the Bristol Stomp on it. Mr. Ramming was quoted as saying, “a 2.8% increase was not a slap in the face to Grand Island voters.” Does this mean that last year’s 8.59% increase which was well in excess of the rate of inflation was a slap in our faces. Given the lack of willingness by the Board and Administration to ferret out waste, it was a slap.
At Monday evening’s Board meeting it was clear that the Board, the Administration, and their supporters believed, with an intensity that would have made a fundamentalist blush, that the ‘yellow’ postcard sent out was the whole explanation for the defeat. Trust me, it wasn’t. It is impossible for them to envisage a scenario where the public didn’t hang on their every word. One teacher was heard to say, last week, that “only ignorant people voted against the budget.” This typifies the utter contempt this privileged class has for anyone who will question anything they do.
The usual litany of woes was recycled: health insurance; pension costs; and transportation. Either the State or OPEC is to blame. (El Nino got a pass.) However, the Board and the Administration negotiated the contracts that provided the gold-plated health insurance and the salaries that lead to the high pension costs. Yes, the stock market has been relatively weak since 9/11 but when the pensions were over funded and no contributions required, taxes didn’t decline. No, instead new expenditures were included that now are considered part of each year’s previously funded sacrosanct expenses that must be increased. The transportation issue of busing children to over sixty public and private schools is a bit disingenuous. The costs to the school system would be even higher if all of those children showed up on your doorstep instead of opting to go to other schools. Besides, it is their money.
There is a paragraph about the capital budget. As one of the most vocal of those expressing concern about its management, I can tell you that this paragraph is meaningless, to say nothing of being totally irrelevant to the issue of this year’s operating budget. But since Mr. Ramming brought it up, we questioned not only how it was spent but also, more importantly, how it was going to be spent. All of the problems were brought to the Board’s attention in advance of one shovel of dirt being turned. Yes, the architect has been fired. Why wasn’t he fired in 2001? His inability to manage this project was not only a concern of ours, but of the State Ed. Dept. back 2001. The last sentence in this paragraph is a classic: “I [Mr. Ramming] can safely say that taxpayer money is completely accounted for.” Saying the taxpayers’ money is completely accounted for is not synonymous with saying that it was spent on what the taxpayers voted for or that we received top value for our expenditures. We know it wasn’t and we didn’t. We have a gym with a roof that leaks that we didn’t vote for; a music room with acoustics that need at least $60,000 of corrections; and no science labs, which we did vote for that will cost at least $350,000 to provide. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and the District ran an adding machine while the taxpayers got burned. Just beautiful. By the way, we still haven’t been told what the award was our “award-winning energy conservation project" won or who the awarding body was.
Now we come to the typical low-level extortion that we hear every time the Board and Administration don’t get their way. The horror stories about how the world as we know it will come to an end. The list includes cutting expenditures on musical instruments: why are we buying those, anyway? If parents want their children to learn an instrument they can either buy or rent one. Field trips are to be cut, we’re told. So? The key thread, though, was the children will pay! What pathetic bullies.
Many of the attendees spoke in favor of resubmitting the budget, which is their right. The implicit and, in many cases, explicit theme running through their statements is that we will be hurting the children if we go to a contingency budget. (This is, of course, what the Board and Administration want us to think.) They must believe that there isn’t any waste in the budget. I disagree. It is chocked full of waste and self-aggrandizing spending.
Let us look at places to cut. Not one mention, anywhere, has been made of the administrative overhead. The school district officials have an overblown sense of entitlement. As I have said many times before, we don’t need an asst. superintendent of curriculum. The state sets the curriculum; we have a superintendent, principals, asst. principals, dept. heads, and teachers. They should be able to figure it out; if not, why are they teaching our children? $110,000+ is a lot of money to pay for power point presentations. We have an asst. superintendent for business at $110,000+ also. This is 40% more than one would have to pay for a good CPA in this area. We have a principal slot at Sidway for at least $97,500. Again, this is a pure waste of money. It is being filled, in the interim at a cost of $350/day, I understand.
It doesn’t stop there. I mentioned entitlements above. The superintendent, the asst. superintendents of curriculum and business, and the director of athletics each have their own secretary. The director of pupil personnel has two secretaries. There are two accounts payable clerks plus a treasurer. There is a personnel clerk for certified personnel and one for uncertified personnel. These latter two positions used to be filled by one person. We have a switchboard operator. We also have a communications consultant. Can’t the Administration write its own material? If not, go see an English teacher.
In this day and age of emails, voice mail, and spreadsheet, database and word processing packages, as well as having a switchboard operator, it is hard to believe that we need all of this “help”. What do they do all day? Again, nothing in the “Wake Up Call” column mentioned any cutbacks or adjustments by the head honchos around this place. This is where you start. Nice headlines like “Wake Up Call” aren’t substitutes for making hard decisions.
The high priesthood attitude is appalling. They believe that taxpayers are nothing more than a bunch of yahoos who should leave things to their betters. May be, but the folks running our school system aren’t our betters. They have never seen an expenditure that they didn’t think should be increased.
Voting down the budget again will really be a wake up call. This time maybe they will get up. The Board will be forced to choose between the children or the entitlement class. Let’s see if they really put the children first. Clearly, a yes vote just keeps us with business as usual: a smug administration and mediocre academic results for the money we spend. Being for education is not equivalent to giving the board and Administration a blank check. They have been terrible stewards of our money.
One last thing: In 1998 the Republicans in the House of Representatives were heavily favored to add substantially to their majority. They didn’t; in fact, they lost five seats. Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House, accepted responsibility, and resigned. If the School District were a Parliamentary system, the crushing defeat suffered at the polls last Tuesday would have caused the government to resign and call for new elections. I believe that the five incumbent Board members should do the honorable thing and resign with new elections being held. Their stewardship was given a massive vote of no confidence.
Grand Island Schools Capital Project - 2005
By James M. Mulcahy
January 11, 2005
I believe that the taxpayers of Grand Island need to know the details of what I believe to be the gross mismanagement of the $18.4MM Capital Project that they approved in 1999. This project is going to add over $300 per year to our tax bills. The tax burden in New York State is just that: burdensome. In WNY it is even worse than the average. We don’t need to layer on additional dollars due to mismanagement.
I am using this venue to communicate because the School Board only permits one to speak for three minutes at its bi-monthly meetings. Turnout, understandably given the inability to have a conversation with the Board, is pathetic at best. If it weren’t for the fact that High School students are required to attend one School Board and one Town Board meeting the attendance wouldn’t make double-digits.
My writing style is terse, on a good day. This column is no exception. There is nothing shaded or nuanced in my presentation. I don’t apologize for that. I just want to make it clear, upfront, that I don’t intend to be verbose.
Let me start with a little history for those who don’t know the sequence of events; for those who may have forgotten; and those who may have wished to forget. I’ve numbered the paragraphs as I will be referring back to some later on.
1. On May 18, 1999 the taxpayers approved an $18.4MM capital improvement project to upgrade our schools.
2. Former Superintendent (Supt.) Paul Fields commented at the time that he hoped the construction bids would come in low so there might be funds to fix the High School roof that needed to be replaced. He said the $18.4MM didn’t include funds for this. I will come back to this “nugget” later. However, one has to ask, “why wasn’t the $18.4MM made larger to include fixing the roof? Leaky roofs lead to much more serious problems."
3. The capital project was separated into two parts: The energy conservation component and the rest. The energy conservation piece cost $2,145,802. This would leave $16,254,198 for the rest of the project. Two observations on the energy project: 1) it was referred to “as our award-winning energy project.” What was the award and who awarded it? And 2) where is any discussion of the $2,145,802 in any of the prospecti that the School system has issued in the past two years? I happen to know the answer but I believe that the Board should explain it themselves to the taxpayers.
4. I became involved in the Fall of 2001 when a number of citizens complained to me that the project hadn’t started even though the taxpayers approved it almost 2 ½ years earlier. I obtained a copy of a letter written to the Board and the Supt. on August 28, 2001 by the State Education Department (SED) Office of Facilities Planning. The letter expressed their (the SED) frustration in dealing with our architect (Ed Egan) on the unacceptable condition of the plans even though they had spent substantial time working with him. At the September 10, 2001 Board meeting Supt. Fields announced, “The district is in line for approval of its capital project, possibly in January. District reps. are to meet in Albany with SED officials for a final review.” This statement was made eight business days after the date of the letter from the SED. Did he seriously believe that all of the problems outlined in the letter had been corrected in that time when they hadn’t in the previous year?
5. For those who may be unaware, I came to the January 14, 2002 School Board meeting. I confronted the Board and the Supt. with the letter and their misleading, at best, (my words at the time were lying and conning - I stand by them) communications with the public. It turned out that only School Board President Richard McCowan and Supt. Fields had actually seen the August 28 letter. Messrs. McCowan and Fields fought back. I won’t go into the details but they orchestrated a vicious campaign to discredit me, impugn my motives, and flat-out lie about my background. This took place instead of addressing the issues I raised.
6.I further discovered that since Mr. Egan was a one-man operation and awarding an $18.4MM project under the circumstances was a bit of a stretch (my brother-in-law is an architect who was flabbergasted that Mr. Egan would even consider this project. He wouldn’t do projects in excess of $1.5MM), it was recommended that he partner with another firm. He teamed up with a less-than-reputable individual. I kept pointing out these problems as well as the fact that their cost estimates were seriously out-of-date. I also reminded the Board of the very high likelihood of substantial change orders, with their increased cost, due to the poor architectural plans.
7. In late January 2002 the SED gave its approval. Requests for bids went out and were received in April, I believe. Horrors of horrors, the low bid was about 10% above the available funds. Here is where it gets really interesting. The District “reconfigured” the project, obviously scaling it back, in order to get bids within their budget. This is a key point to which we will come back. The request for bids went out a second time with a due date of July 23, 2002. Some of the plans were still so indecipherable that a couple of the potential bidders split the cost among themselves to remeasure. Since the plans were so bad, the bidders asked for an extension until July 31, 2002 to submit their bids.
8. At a special meeting on August 5, 2002 nine contracts for the Ransom Road phase were awarded. The Monday, August 12, 2002 School Board news on the Isledegrande web page stated, ”Project cost is estimated at $12.7MM, leaving $3.2MM for Huth Road and $2.1MM for Kaegebein, negating predictions by some Islanders that there would not be enough money for renovations at the Elementary Schools.” (Italics added.)
9. Au contraire, nothing was negated. This was just more misinformation from the School Board’s version of Tass. Last I heard, $12.7MM + $3.2MM + $2.1MM = $18.0MM. Refer back to paragraph 3. After the energy portion of the project there was only $16.3MM left. Even with the new math $16.3MM < $18.0MM. These amounts do not include the increased cost due to change orders that totaled $605,962 as of 1/5/05.
10. At a number of Board meetings in 2002 the Board was asked to provide a side-by-side comparison of what was voted on in 1999 vs. what was actually in the plans that the contractors bid on. Here are the responses we received at one time or another. Now I am not making any of these responses up: 1) dead silence, they ignored the request; 2) ”yes, we will provide that”; 3) “we really didn’t mean response 2) literally”; and, my favorite, 4) “there wasn’t any specific plan voted on in 1999.” Response 4) begs one to ask the questions, “how did you come up with $18.4MM amount?” and “do you think the public knew they were giving you a blank check?”
11. Part of the final Ransom Road project included replacing the roof. Remember the ”nugget” I spoke of in para. 2? Mr. Fields explicitly stated replacing the roof was not part of the $18.4MM budgeted for the project. It is here now. This means some thing or some things had to be excised. We know the scope was scaled back because the initial round of bids were too high. We now know it was also scaled back to accommodate the roof repair. Refer to para. 8, where the Board stated that there would be enough for the elementary schools. The only way this could occur is to have scaled back the project. Refer to para. 10, response 4) where it was said that ‘there was no plan’; of course, there was a specific plan. How else can you delete items?
12. At the November 22, 2004 School Board meeting a high school student, Sarah Tanbakuchi, addressed the Board with student concerns about how the monies for the capital project were allocated. Their concerns were that too much was allocated to music and sports programs and not enough for the science rooms. In a spectacular display of hypocrisy, Board member Mrs. Cohen “voiced her frustrations that monies were never set aside to revamp the science rooms even though it was in the preliminary plans to do so.” Time out, sports fans! Mrs. Cohen, who was an active participant in the cabal out to discredit me in 2002, now says there were plans. Her pal, Dick McCowan had denied point-blank to a citizen after one of the Board meetings that there were any plans. Remember, para. 11, response 4), ‘there were no plans’. Again, how could Mrs. Cohen know about a before and after comparison when we were repeatedly told that there weren’t any preliminary plans to be able to make that comparison? Further, Mrs. Cohen was on the board when the contracts were let in August, 2002. Why didn’t she speak up then?
13. How much of these change orders represent true design changes based on new information and how much reflect poorly done architectural drawings. (At least one potential bidder, even after very substantially marking up his bid, passed on bidding at all. He couldn’t get comfortable with the specs and felt there was too much potential for disputes.) Again, Ransom Road has over $468,000 in increases while Huth Road has over $137,000 due to these change orders. Don’t forget that we taxpayers pay for this.
14. At the Monday, January 10, 2005 Board meeting one of the items on the agenda was the ‘Status of Architect’s (Egan) contract. Another item was the ‘Appointment of Trautman Associates as the Architect of Record for Kaegebein School.’ It is clear that Trautman was brought in to clean up the mess that the board created by going with Egan in the first place. There was further discussion about the science rooms. This part of the meeting was surrealistic. The conversation sounded as if this was a new problem that they needed to deal with. No, it was a problem that the Board created themselves by changing the plans and using an architect who, clearly, wasn’t up to a task of this magnitude.
15. I recognize that there have been some changes on the board: Mr. Seaman, Mr. Dallessandro, and Mr. Casey are all new. As are Mr. Ramming, the Supt. and Mrs. Ingrassi, the Asst. Supt. However, the others were part and parcel of this mess. As were Mr. McCowan, Mr. Fields, and Mrs. Blair. Why should the taxpayers have to bear the cost of their incompetence? If there isn’t anything in the NY State legal code to hold them personally liable, there should be. This was not a one-time, in the heat of battle decision. No. It was revisited over and over for years. The taxpayers are going to be expected to pay for these mistakes. They won’t be called mistakes, though. No, it will be phrased that we need to upgrade our science rooms to be a top ten school. Maybe so, but who should pay for it? We will have paid once, already. It is time to demand real accountability from the Board and its minions.