The Curious Case for Kubit

I received this email and thought I would share it with you.  Just an FYI, Mr. Kubit isn't getting my vote.

 

The Curious Case for Kubit

 

I have seen the yard signs in the lawns of some of the most staunch Republican supporters and, as a Republican myself, I struggle to see how it is that true Republicans can support this individual for re-election.  For each of the tenets of the Republican party, I fail to see where Mr. Kubit holds the line.

 

Let's first address the idea of fiscal restraint.  Mr. Kubit has yet to vote against any of the tax raising school district budgets in the last three budget cycles.  During his election year (2007), the Mt Lebanon School District millage rate stood at 23.56 or $2,356 per $100,000 of assessed home value.  Since he has been elected, he has raised taxes to 23.81 in 2008,  24.11 in 2009 and finally, in the year he was actually the President of the Board, he raised taxes to 26.63 in 2010. This is a 13% tax increase in just three budgets.  That is three tax increases in three years.  And this during financially trying times for many families in Mt. Lebanon who either live on fixed incomes or who have had trouble staying employed during our recent economic turmoil.

In each of these budgets one must remember that the school district has continued to lose student population to the tune of hundreds of students.  But, instead of reducing staff to account for the reductions in students, the District continued to add staff while Mr. Kubit was on the Board.  This is not fiscal fitness, this is fiscal insanity!  As was written on another school directors' blog, just as you would expect to add staff during population booms, Boards must learn how to trim staff during population declines.

Next, let me talk a little bit about leadership.  During Mr. Kubit's year as President of the Board, he voted consistenly in favor of a high school project budget in excess of $113 million. In fact, one can easily argue that Mr. Kubit used his position as school board president to cheerlead the project even while the community at large consistently voiced very strong and loud opposition.  He even sent out a taxpayer funded FAQ to the community that argued in favor of the project. Mr Kubit cheerfully announced in the FAQ that he expected bids for the project to come in 17-25% below the budget HE VOTED IN FAVOR OF.  He wrote the following:

 

"The maximum cost would be $113,274,265. However, this does not take into account that bids on recent construction projects came in 17 to 25% below original estimates. Additionally we are working with our architects and construction manager to find waysto further reduce the cost through value engineer."

 

Well, the results of Mr. Kubit's leadership are in and, instead of coming in 17-25% below estimates, the project bids came in more than 25% OVER budget.  This is a total swing of $42 MILLION DOLLARS OVER BUDGET while following Mr. Kubit's lead.  The mess he has left us means more months of delay and more wasted taxpayer money while the Board cleans up the mess.  Here we are more than 9 months later and we are still waiting for the next round of bids for a cheapened high school project that likely will not include everything that was promised to the community for the large price tag.

 

When it came to approving material that was appropriate for curriculum, Mr. Kubit stayed eerily silent while Michael Mann's famous propaganda about Global Warming was approved.  Two directors asked that the Superintendent ensure that there was a competing view to the alarmist one supported by Michael Mann.  The Superintendent agreed and made sure that the two directors demand for balance was met. It takes real leadership to know when to say no and Mr. Kubit voiced no opposition and stayed silent while voting in favor of the text

 

Next I want to tackle community involvement.  While it is true that the community has been involved on multiple levels with this project, it was ignored when it mattered most. In December 2009, the school board heard from a group of design and construction professionals. This group was called the Community Advisory Committee on the high school project. These engineers and architects met for many weeks going over plans for the high school. At the conclusion of their meetings they presented a list of items that the Board should follow in order to improve the design of the high school and also to reduce costs of the project.  One of the items suggested was to hire an Owner's Representative to help the school board understand the drawings and implications of design changes on the project.  Outside of usinga Single Prime contractor (which the Board was going to do anyway) the Board ignored every one of the suggestions of the CAC.  Some of the suggestion included the owner's rep (which would have lowered costs), relocating the loading dock (which would have improved design and lowered costs), and renovating the largest building on the campus to accomodate 21st Century learning (which would have saved easily $10 million).  So, while the community was involved through the CAC, under Mr. Kubit, its advice was completely ignored. 

 

Additionally under the topic of community involvement goes the State's Act 34 process.  Act 34 gives the public a chance to speak its mind about high cost construction projects. In fact, it is called "The Taj Mahal Act".  During this process the community is asked to send emails, letters, and other correspondence to the Board.  Once all the documents were collected from the public, a single Director asked the Board (including Mr. Kubit) to tally all of the emails,letters, and signatures that were gathered as part of the process to determine where the community stood on this project.  Despite various polls (including a professional poll done by the Republican Committee of Mt. Lebanon) showing that the great majority of the community supported a project cost between $69 and $90 million, Mr. Kubit ignored the request of the Director to tally the Board's own results to gauge community interest in a $113+ million project.  Instead of directing the central office staff to do this, he simply moved on to the next item on the agenda.  Why would he have done this unless he already knew the results would show something he, as the grand cheerleader, did not want to announce to the public.  A true leader would have accepted the Act 34 documents and, in order to reassure the community of the tact the Board was taking, would have tallied the results and announced them to the community.  What we got instead was silence.

 

Finally, lets talk about open government.  Good government is an open and honest government.  As President, Mr. Kubit was tasked to meet with the Muncipality on matters pertinent to both the Commission and School Board. However, these meetings stopped for good once it was mentioned that the Municipal leadership wanted to have these Joint Steering meetings in public with members of the community allowed to be engaged in the process.  Instead of agreeing to these open meetings, Mr. Kubit simply stopped going.  The Joint Meetings ceased to exist under Mr. Kubit's presidency on the school board.

 

Also under this tab, we must not forget in Mr. Kubit's FAQ the completely made up projected enrollment statistics used to justify the scope and size of the high school project.  When asked where he got the enrollment projections from, Mr. Kubit pointed to someone in the central office.  When that person was asked where she received her information for the 20-year enrollment projections, she pointed to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.  When following the trail to the PDE, it was found that NO SUCH INFORMATION EXISTED!  Instead of a mea culpa, we received a belated answer about how there was some confusion between the enrollment projections and how the school project bond reimbursement was calculated.  If it seems like those two items are completely unrelated, its because they ARE completely unrelated.  The District simply fabricated an enrollment number to try to help their case for an expensive, over-sized high school project.  And once caught in the lie, they made something up again to cover it up.  Mr. Kubit could have put a stop to this but again stayed silent.

 

If I am going to vote for a school board candidate, especially a Republican one, I want to make sure I can count on that person to lead, to be fiscally conservative, and to support open government even when it is not convenient.  On all of these counts Mr. Kubit has failed. It is my intent to leave Mr. Kubit's name off my ballot when I vote on November 8th.  I would urge fellow Republicans to do the same. We need to show the community that we support Republicans who act like Republicans and not Republicans that ask for our help only to give us all a bad name through their selfish actions.