NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Chris Eberhart has a story up in The Journal News. I know Chris and know him to be a good reporter so while I have no doubt he is accurately reporting what the district told him what they told him is a series of facts arranged in a way to misrepresent the reality of what is going on with the bonding for fifty million dollars. In other words, the District is attempting to cover up their major screw-ups in fixing problems that were identified to the board and the administration 18 month ago by their own consultants and which Talk of the Sound has been reporting on for the past five years.
From Eberhart’s report, we know the exact amount of the borrowing is expected to be $49.5mm, a Building Condition Survey is expected to be completed next week, there will be a voter referendum in December, the plan calls for work to begin next summer and be completed over a three year period, ending in 2018, that this bonding plan will be discussed at the October 6th School Board meeting. Let’s set aside the question of how the district has a precise figure as to the amount to be borrowed when the Building Condition Survey has not been completed.
Eberhart spoke to Schools Superintendent Dr. Brian Osborne. Osborne told Eberhart “the district needs to move ahead with an aggressive timeline” because “waiting until the May school election to vote on the bond would push repairs back another year.”
This sounds like Osborne has a sense of urgency about making repairs when in fact, it has already been more than a year since Osborne was presented the recommendations from an advisory team based on an Annual Visual Inspection conducted in December 2013 and a Building Condition Survey conducted by Mike Orifici of Capital Construction Consulting in March 2014.
Based on this false representation that Osborne is now acting “immediately” upon becoming aware of the dangerous condition of the schools, various statements of fact are presented to buttress this false claim. Each of these statements of fact, taken individually, is true (or at least presumably true) but they are presented within this false context of “immediate action”.
Osborne has previously admitted in his open letter to parents in August that he was presented information about what he calls “the aging buildings” at the time he was hired in the Summer of 2014. What information is that? He is referring to what I call “The Orifici Report”, a narrative document explaining all of the problems with the buildings which I have been seeking to obtain under the Freedom of Information Law for more than a year and which the district has, so far, refused to provide. Osborne (as well as the entire school board) was given a presentation of the report by Orifici in which he urged that Osborne move immediately to bond for $39.2 million to make urgently needed repairs that were a threat to the health and safety of students and staff. Osborne explicitly rejected the recommendation to bond 14 months ago and the price tag has now, apparently, increased.
I have been calling on the public to demand that the district release the un-redacted version of The Orifici Report so the public can see what Osborne was told 14 months ago. That report was delivered with a set of recommendations to act immediately and specifically to bond as early as January 2015 so that work could begin to fix the roofs and ceilings, in particular, during the Summer of 2015. Osborne refused and we all know what happened to the ceiling at Webster. It is precisely because Osborne was specifically warned about the Webster roof/ceiling issues that he does not want the public to see that report.
To the point of how the district lies with true statements, note how the Journal News article is interlaced with various statements that are true or presumably true:
- “After a roof collapse in a New Rochelle elementary school over the summer, the district will look to replace many of the buildings’ roofs as part of a $49.5 M bond.” (TRUE)
- “a $49.5 million bond vote to address infrastructure needs in the school district…” (TRUE)
- “in the wake of a ceiling collapse in one of the elementary schools this past summer.” (TRUE)
- “No one was inside the Daniel Webster Elementary School at the time of the collapse.” (TRUE)
- “What happened at Daniel Webster was a very vivid reminder that we have to stay in front of our facilities or something detrimental could happen.” (TRUE)
- “The bond has what the district is calling “critical need” projects.” (TRUE)
- “Chief among them are roof replacements in many of the schools.” (TRUE)
- “most of the roofs are expected to be rated as “unsatisfactory” or “poor…the two lowest ratings.” (TRUE)
- “many of the roofs have slate on them, and pieces are breaking off and falling” (TRUE)
- “CSArch is currently conducting a building condition survey of the New Rochelle school district.” (TRUE)
- “The building condition survey is a New York State requirement every five years.” (TRUE)
- “Other projects included in the bond are electrical upgrades, improvements needed to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, masonry repairs, and window and door replacement.” (TRUE)
- “Roof [is] $24 million of the total $49.5 million” (TRUE)
None of these statements are in dispute.
What is in dispute is the repeated claim that the issue with the buildings is that they are “aging buildings” as if a building being “old” means the ceilings can be expected to collapse and that the problems were unknown until the “[Webster] incident brought to the surface the urgency of the buildings’ infrastructure needs”.
This is the misrepresentation Osborne seeks.
First, by definition, all buildings are “aging” even a building erected last week is “aging” so this is a meaningless statement on its face. More to the point, even pre-war buildings like Webster are not so old that they are expected to be falling apart. Webster School was built in the 1930’s. The City of New Rochelle has many, many buildings that are older than Webster School and they are not falling apart — because they were properly maintained. The worst building, according to Jeff White, is the high school which he says will get the bulk of the money. Much of the “old wing” was rebuilt after a fire in 1968 and the “new wing” was completed in 2005 so while the high school was originally constructed in the 1920’s and 1930’s, most the building is between 15 and 50 years old. The “new wing” at Trinity has been the subject of many complaints by parents and is also relatively recent. The issue is not that buildings are “aging” but that funds that should have gone to maintain the buildings were diverted elsewhere or spent on “aesthetic” capital projects or simply stolen.
Second, the “incident” that “brought to the surface the urgency of the buildings’ infrastructure needs” was not the Webster ceiling collapse but rather reporting by Talk of the Sound on various examples of fraud in capital construction projects and the departure of Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak. When Dr. Jeffrey Korostoff became Interim Superintendent he accepted my challenge to him to hire an independent, outside consultant to evaluate any 5 of the stories published on Talk of the Sound about corruption in capital projects (he chose 6). Orifici reviewed those projects and confirmed our reporting and then some. He found that the two vendors involved (Wager Construction, GRW Plumbing) had defrauded the district and that there was no oversight of the work they did do — and much of the work they did now has to be redone and is presumably part of the $50 million budget for repairs. This report, in turn. led to Orifici personally inspecting each building and preparing both an Annual Visual Inspection report and a Building Condition Survey report — these were completed by March 2014 or 18 months ago. So, the Webster ceiling collapse did not bring the building issues to the surface but rather forced Osborne’s hand because while other problems (and reports) could be hidden from the public there was no way to hide having to shut down a building and move an entire school community to a new, temporary location.
Note that Orifici prepared a Building Condition Survey report in 2014. So why does Osborne claim that a Building Condition Survey report is due next week? Osborne has had a Building Condition Survey since the day he arrived. That is the report he referred to in his letter to parents in August. That is the report the district is refusing to release under FOIL.
UPDATE: I spoke with the School Clerk today about why I have not gotten the report or even an acknowledgement of my request for the report. She said that Osborne is ignoring her emails asking for a copy of the report. These emails are themselves subject to FOIL so I may ask for them next if I do not get the report soon.
Osborne is desperate to misrepresent the situation because he knows that if the public could see The Orifici Report, could hear what recommendations were made by Orifici, that he was specifically advised to move immediately (Summer 2014) to borrow the money to make repairs, they would want to hear Osborne explain precisely why he rejected the recommendations to bond for urgent repairs when they were made 14 months ago — before the ceiling collapse at Webster, before the ceiling collapse at Barnard, before the boilers went out at Albert Leonard Middle School leaving students in the cold over the course of last winter.
Osborne knows what I know and what other school officials know — that the public will not like his answer.
Unless the public demands and gets the full, un-redacted Orifici report, Osborne will continue to hide the fact that he was specifically warned about the Webster roof and ceiling more than a year ago and failed to borrow the money to fix the problem which, in turn, begs the question as to why he ignored those warnings and rejected the advice of his own team and put the health and safety of students and staff at risk.
RELATED: Our series on ADA Violations in New Rochelle Schools, Mike Orifici evaluates our reporting on six examples of fraud in capital construction projects.
New Rochelle Schools to Borrow $50,000,000 to Address Years of Building Neglect