"In theory, PlanCon encourages school districts to build and maintain top-quality facilities. In practice, PlanCon rewards districts for abandoning or demolishing perfectly good buildings and replacing them with lavish facilities that do little to improve learning but take decades to pay off."
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10325/1104596-109.stm#ixzz16lhDU0hW
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10325/1104596-109.stm#ixzz16lhDU0hW
2 comments:
The Mt Lebanon Finance Team including Mr. Franz of Janney Montgomery Scott and Mr. Jaynes, our PlanCon consultant failed the Board on the reimbursement issue and need to be replaced.
The Board was told we would receive 16% of debt service costs to finance the High School Project. The Bonds were issued October 21, 2009.
In January 2010 president Kubit announced the reimbursement was only 8% of debt service. When asked to explain the difference Kubit said he didn’t have the papers with the correct numbers on them and would explain the difference at the next meeting.
Kubit did not live up to his promise. The reimbursement question came up again at the January 28, 2009 Audit and Finance Committee meeting and neither Kubit nor Klein answered the question.
The net result was the Finance team gave misinformation to the Board about reimbursement before the bonds were issued and did not correct the mistake until three months after the bonds were issued.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education changed the final numbers to correctly state our reimbursement and the Finance Team each took home a nice check for sloppy work.
Mary Birks stated she was voting for PlanCon Part D because it is worth $9,000,000 to our community.
That leaves $9,000,000 missing from the reimbursement.
At $4.00 each Mt. Lebanon is missing 2,250,000 latte's
The article confirms precisely what Dirk Taylor and the entire CAC tried in vain to tell the SB just about a year ago. *Don't confuse us with the facts, our minds are made up* was the SB attitude, a posture they have maintained.
Additionally, in following the PlanCon process itself for this HS project, I find the process is a complete sham ! Although allegedly structured to make Districts comply with what would otherwise be stringent requirements in order to qualify for State reimbursement, at almost
every step along the instructural paths there is an *out* provided to allow for "WAIVERS", "EXCEPTIONS" and "EXEMPTIONS"....Districts merely have to check a convenient box on a PlanCon form, fill in the blanks provided or submit a written request with the form.
This is what happens when a State agency is staffed with retirees from the profession and organizations that the agency is supposed to oversee and regulate. State laws are further developed and explained as Regulations, which then require official Procedures for implementation, which in turn result in Guidelines that agencies create to perform the tasks as they see them. While this may sound reasonable and appropriate, guidelines -- like the PlanCon process instructions and forms -- often times do not really reflect legislative intent and legislative history. As a result, the PDE and its PlanCon process mission is really to facilitate the plans of school districts rather than to truly regulate school districts and hold them to strict standards. We even hired a PlanCon expert consultant to guide us through the process and deal with the PlanCon bureaucracy.
Bill Lewis
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