Financial Woes Still Plague CISD

School Board Just Can’t Get a Grip

by Harold Gentry

In the beginning the CISD school board members began discussing a $500,000 blow up building to be used as an indoor practice facility. However it wasn’t long before that idea blew away like a puff of smoke. Talk of a new metal facility surfaced due to durability issues. I guess in the grand scheme of educational value for the kid, an inflatable building wasn’t nearly impressive enough after we got a look over the fence at Burleson’s facility.

On June 13, 2007 local news sources cited the new cost estimate for the indoor practice facility at $1.2 million. As the ideas grew and expanded so did the building and the price, which now led CISD board members to explain on October 6, 2008 that the building would cost $2 million.

On February 27, 2009 I turned in a Public Information request asking for the original budgeted cost, what we had spent to date and how much still needs to be spent to complete the facility. I received that information on March 20, 2009. I see from the total that it now will cost $2.4 million upon completion or twice the cost estimated in 2007.

I have already heard some finger pointing at whose fault it may be for this project going over the estimate, but my public information request had two interesting statements I will share with the taxpayers. The first was that the cost of the practice facility was not included in the budget for 2008-2009. The most obvious question is “Why not?” Secondly, the school board approved all construction costs and changes.

Education suffers throughout the Lone Star state because educators and school boards have lost their focus. Instead of an institute for higher learning it has become a vast black hole into which we pour millions of dollars to satisfy the egos of a few at the expense of many. Education will never correct itself as long as it is allowed to be the judge, jury and executioner over a corrupt system of checks and balances that has become all checks. The checks I’m talking about are the kind you send in every year to quench their unquenchable thirst for power and money.

The kids and their education are just convenient excuses to tug at your heartstrings and make you feel better about having to reach further into your wallet. What are we going to do if it doesn’t produce the desired results that some egos promise it will?

The Texas Education Agency report convicted CISD on federal fund misuse for expenses that were not reasonable and necessary. Now CISD has shifted from spending the government’s funds on unreasonable and unnecessary expenses to spending your local tax dollars on unreasonable and unnecessary expenses.

What do you say, taxpayer?

Here are the costs for the Indoor Practice Facility so far:

SCM Construction Inc.            $2,012,000
add'l change order                          22,913
Field Turf                                       270,765
Water Meters                                    2,373
Electric Meter                                    1,609
Alpha Testing                                    8,498 - (inspection type services - contract budget)
Childress Engineers                         12,328
BMA                                                80,480
total cost                                   $2,410,966

Amounts paid to date:

2007-2008                            $83,096.91
2008-2009                        $1,252,654.44
                                        $1,335,751.35