The Journal reports that the county wants to buy the old
Petroleum Club building. link sub helpful.
The purchase is justified by "making life easier for "certain"
people "some" of the time."
According to the article, the county will get the building
"for free" for at least a few years because tenet leases
will cover the mortgage payments.
"The county also has offices spread across three other
Downtown locations and wants to consolidate them in
one location, County Manager Thaddeus Lucero said.
People who want to file certain records now have to
visit more than one building for some land transactions,
he said.
Lucero said rental income from the tenants already in
500 Marquette, including law offices and accounting
firms, would cover the annual debt payments for
a few years."
(emphasis added)
The déjà vu part comes when you remember that this was
exactly the same argument given to stakeholders when APS
bought itself fancy new digs in the heights - renters will
pay the bills so taxpayers won't have to.
APS now has no paying renters and the apartments in the
sky are bulging at the seams with the "chosen" administrators
and their myriad underlings.
Déjà vu all over again, again.
Manzano High School was flooded by rain over the weekend;
again. It was flooded by rain almost exactly a year ago.
Why was this taxpayer investment not protected from
the most recent rain? Who was responsible for reacting
to the last flooding by preventing this one?
You will never know, because there is not a single
administrator or board member in the entire APS who
is required to provide a candid, forthright and honest
answer to a legitimate question like;
Why are taxpayers going to have to pay for
a second hardwood gym floor for Manzano HS
in as many years?
2 comments:
FYI Today’s journal Westside edition
http://www.abqjournal.com/west/05114735west08-05-08.htm
Getting to know APS
By Andrea Schoellkopf
Journal Staff Writer
Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent Winston Brooks wanted an up-close introduction to his district.
And it's going to take at least a week for him to do it.
Brooks and his leadership team spent nearly six hours in the South Valley on Monday, visiting schools and meeting with area residents.
"We need to be out there in the community trying to change public perception," Brooks told a group of about 30 that included legislators, community leaders, APS administrators and others.
The meeting was the first of seven tours — one for each board member's district — for the new superintendent, who was hired in the spring to replace Elizabeth Everitt. On top of that, 14 community-based meetings will be held between now and next spring throughout the city.
The tour of the South Valley schools, which included stops at community health centers and other agencies working with APS, began and ended at the Hubbell House on Isleta SW, a former trading post that has been turned into a museum and demonstration farm.
State Sen. Linda Lopez, who helped organize the tour, said she wanted to get top APS officials into the South Valley and Southwest Mesa to "see who we are."
Brooks outlined his goals for the district, which he will present to the school board in an upcoming meeting. They include raising test scores districtwide by 3 percent a year, improving public perception and communication, and consolidating functions that were once spread across the district.
Along the way, there were visits to Pajarito Elementary, whose principal, Gene Saavedra, intrigued Brooks with rocking chairs and bookshelves marking the school's Reading Center in the hallways.
APS capital master plan director Kizito Wijenje explained how the city's growth has been temporarily stopped by the real estate market.
"This area has the second-highest foreclosure rate in the state," Wijenje said on a tour through the sprawling subdivisions of the Southwest Mesa. "It's only allowed us to catch our breath."
Of the 11 schools APS is building by 2010, eight are on the West Side, he said.
A stop at the South Valley Academy Charter School featured a sampling of salsa and organic vegetables grown on the school's farm.
The school, which has met Adequate Yearly Progress for the last three years through student scores on the state Standards Based Assessment, has about 90 percent of its graduates attending college and is finding its first alumni from 2004 are starting to finish their bachelor's degrees.
The Peanut Butter and Jelly Therapeutic Preschool detailed how it works with children of incarcerated parents, and helps their parents become ready for eventual release through overnight visits to special quarters at the prison.
That's great! The visit was also written up at KOAT.com, which also added (about the South Valley Academy Charter School): "The charter school hasn't had a visit from APS administrators since it opened nine years ago". Aren't almost all charter schools under APS?
http://www.koat.com/education/17092751/detail.html
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