Friday, August 01, 2008

The cost of APS' twin towers

APS maintains and continuously renovates an office complex at 6400 Uptown Blvd.

It has been suggested, that the leadership of the APS has spent tax dollars there, that would have been BETTER spent in schools and class rooms.

Which begs the question;
How much money has been spent there?

Which begs another question;
Is it any of your business?

Do you have a right to ask the leadership of the APS for a candid, forthright, and honest accounting of the spending at the APS Uptown Administrative Complex?

Do you have a right to ask where your tax dollars have been spent?

The short answer is; of course you do.

The longer answer is that it doesn't make any difference if you have the right to ask the question, because the leadership of the APS has refused to answer it.

The leadership of the APS will not surrender to taxpayers;
A candid, forthright, and honest accounting of spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd.

The reason that they won't surrender it,
is because it will reveal that they saved money by ending
FIRE SAFETY INSPECTIONS in APS schools;

and then spent that money on a utterly unjustifiable
million dollar board room.

And then schedule their meetings at times inconvenient to virtually all stakeholders.

They won't hold a school board meeting at a time and in a place where you can ask them legitimate questions about the public interests.

And if you make it to the meeting, and stand up at the public forum, and ask them how much of the public trust and treasure has been squandered in the room you are standing in;

they will not answer.

That's wrong, right?

I need some help. I need people to go to the next board meeting, however inconvenient.

I need some one else to ask them to tell the truth.

At the very least I need some one to stand up behind me when I ask.

Is that too much to ask?

Do you really not care at all how a billion tax dollars a year are being spent?
They refuse to conduct an impartial full scale forensic audit;
how can you still trust them?

Do you get the government you deserve?

"You pick a side when you don't pick a side."

"All that is necessary for evil to prevail in the world,
is for good men to do nothing." eddie burke

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

FYI
Ched, you could take his seat and oh what a show!


School Board Member Won't Run
A Northeast Heights school board member says he won't seek re-election next year because of an increase in the number of board meetings.
Gordon Rowe, who has represented the Far Northeast Heights since 2003, said the "traveling end of it is an issue, " Often, he has attended meetings via telephone.
"We don't need meetings four days a week. All these meetings distract time and resources from the professional staff," he said.
Board President Mary Lee Martin, who has been on the board for 20 years, agreed that the number of meetings has increased.
"He is correct; there are more," Martin said. "And we're trying to get rid of them."
For instance, after former Superintendent Elizabeth Everitt announced her resignation last summer, the board scheduled weekly meetings for updates on the search process.
Martin said those meetings became an agenda-setting meeting for the regular meetings, and were then changed to allow votes to be taken

ched macquigg said...

Wrong district; Marty Esquivel's seat is the one that is not currently being used.

Gordon Rowe has probably no showed more meetings than all of the other board members combined.

When does show up, he says something like;

"I didn't get a chance to look at any of this stuff; but I'm really sure everybody did a GREAT job."

Where did you find this info?

Anonymous said...

It is in the Around the Metro Area Section of today's Journal.

Too bad you couldn't move to his district.I agree, he has never been a good representative, even before Beth left.

Unknown said...

I am not exactly sure, but I think there is a requirement that renovations have to be checked by planning at the city, or the county maybe? Help me out if you know ched, but either way, wouldn't a person be able to request that from the city or county?

Then, ask how much each renovation listed cost. If there are no renovations listed, then every internal purchase order to Maintenance and Operations for changes to the building were not approved, which is bad.

APD gets people on zoning ALL the time, have you seen how they get rid of gang members who shoot in the back yard and stuff with zoning enforcement? I think those cops, they are real cops, fear them, should go see if APS is in need of a Zoning Lesson.