NEW ROCHELLE, NY — New Rochelle School Board Member David Lacher, the board’s longest serving member, has been making the rounds of the Queen City recently to promote the New Rochelle School District’s $50 capital million bond. He appeared last night at a Democratic Party meeting to make his pitch.
Each time he speaks about this, he offers a three-part explanation as to why the District’s buildings are in a state of disrepair.
#1 GREAT RECESSION – the district chose to defer maintenance to lessen the impact of cuts to staff and programs due to the weak economy.
#2 CUOMO TAX LEVY CAP – the district has chosen to remain under the tax cap and so there was less funds overall including for maintenance.
#3 NO MAJOR CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS – there have not been any major projects over the past decade after several of projects from 1994 to 2004.
These statements are basically a recap of similar previous statements including those he made at the time he voted to approve the bond referendum in October.
That last point is interesting because it would not seem that the lack of major construction projects (the last one being the new wing at the high school in 2004) would have any direct impact on repairs and maintenance.
“For each of those construction projects there was always extra money built-in [to the bonds] which could be and was used to do repairs in other buildings besides where the major construction was taking place,” said Lacher. “When that construction stopped, and that extra money was all used up, there were less funds available.”
What Lacher is describing – the diversion of bond proceeds from major construction projects back into the operating budget to fund unrelated repairs elsewhere in the District – is illegal.
This issue was raised to Schools Assistant Superintendent Jeff White and CSArch Engineer Thomas Ritzenthaler on Monday at the New Rochelle High School PTA Meeting to discuss the bond. It is important to understanding their response to know that the currently proposed bond is not scheduled to be issued until 2020. White and Ritzenthaler indicated that whatever took place in the past was not happening with the current bond, that unused funds could not be reallocated elsewhere and if there were available funds left over the bond issued in 2020 would be lowered to reflect that the work cost less than anticipated.
The effect of using a capital bond to raise tens of millions of dollars then siphoning off a portion of those funds to cover operating expenses over a period of years has the effect of reducing the amount of money the district needs to raise through a tax levy. In other words, it is the use of a bond to circumvent a tax levy cap and a form of fraud to do it.
Given that Lacher is pitching the currently proposed $50 million bond using this logic it would seem reasonable to wonder how much money will be siphoned off this time despite the best assurance of two people of integrity who may or not be working for the district in 2020 and thus might not able to act on these assurances when the time comes.
David Lacher did not respond to an email seeking comment.