Trekking through the rich minefields of the consultant’s game
The consultant game is rich territory – especially when the firms are dealing with school districts spending taxpayer money. Who’s really qualified to make the judgment on construction projects, budgets, timelines and change orders? Administrators? School board members? Staff? The answer 99.67% of the time is the proverbial “None of the Above.” That’s how MHUSD gets into the conundrum it’s in now. Interim Superintendent Steve Bertando wants the technology implementation plan to start now for $20 million plus – $2 million in engineering fees. Meanwhile, a couple of trustees believe that Cumming Corporation, the project management firm hired by the district in May for $1.5 million to oversee the first $55 million in capital improvement projects funded by the $198 million Measure G bond, should handle engineering, etc. What school districts need to do? 1. Form an advisory facility committee composed of members from the business and construction world; 2. Hire a staff administrative-level project construction management person to oversee all facilities projects. They would negotiate contracts and have, as clients, the taxpayers and the school district. If districts would make those changes, a lot of money would be saved and a lot of battles avoided. And, really, when you’re talking about spending $198 million and getting the best bang for the buck, doesn’t it make perfect sense?
Crunch Time: Harsh steroid suspensions were a long time coming
Major League Baseball is finally trying to clean up the sport and it's doing it with the seriousness that should have been there 10 years ago when the Mitchell Report came out.
Three rules for BTS shopping
Welcome to back-to-school – or as I like to call it, “Let's see how fast we can spend every penny in the checking account.” Oh sure, there is a lot of excitement about summer ending - the house will stay clean for longer than five minutes and food may actually remain in the fridge until well after 2:05 p.m. (for those of you unfamiliar with the teenage species, 2:05 p.m. is their version of the crack of dawn).
A wallet and a couple of lives saved
How fast time races by. As impossible as it might seem, it was one year ago when our incredibly talented (I’m hoping for another year) editor asked me if I would be interested in writing a column for the prestigious Morgan Hill Times. Never one to pass a a new challenge, my response was a predictable, “Who me?”
