APS M&O Director weighs in on the real cost of the John Milne boardroom.

John Dufay, link, is the Director of APS' Maintenance and Operations Department, link. We pay him one hundred four thousand dollars a year and perks, link.

When asked (by means of a bonafide request for public records) for a candid, forthright and honest accounting of spending on the new boardroom, and according to APS Director of Communications and Public Records Custodian Rigo Chavez, John Dufay responded;

"... the cost for construction of the John Milne Board Room,
including the lobby area, was in fact $384,450.00."

In apparent contrast, a Journal article, link, reporting budget overruns alone, nearing $500,000.

APS student standards of conduct. link, of which Dufay is one of APS' senior-most role models, read in significant part;

Honesty in communications is expressing the truth as best we know it and not conveying it in a way likely to mislead or deceive. There are three dimensions:

Truthfulness. Truthfulness is presenting the facts to the best of our knowledge. Intent is the crucial distinction between truthfulness and truth itself. Being wrong is not the same thing as lying, although honest mistakes can still damage trust insofar as they may show sloppy judgment.

Sincerity. Sincerity is genuineness, being without trickery or duplicity. It precludes all acts, including half-truths, out-of-context statements, and even silence, that are intended to create beliefs or leave impressions that are untrue or misleading.

Candor. In relationships involving legitimate expectations of trust, honesty may also require candor, forthrightness and frankness, imposing the obligation to volunteer information that another person needs to know. (emphasis added)

If you wanted to file a complaint against Dufay, with regard to his lack of candor, you would be hard pressed to find a place to file it; a place where the complaint would see due process.

If you ask the school board to write a policy to creating due process for complaints against administrators and board members they will not.

They have no more interest in due process of complaints filed against them, than they have in providing due process for the petition laid before them.

Bottom line, there is no place to file a complaint

• against Dufay with regard to his lack of candor, or
• against Supt Winston Brooks with regard to his suppression of evidence of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators, or
• against the School Board, individually and collectively, with regard to their denial of due process to hundreds of whistleblower complaints and complainants, or
• against the School Board individually and collectively, with regard to their use of a publicly funded private police force to cover up credible allegations and evidence of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators.

and where the allegation will see an independent and impartial adjudication by someone with the power, resources and authority to hold these honestly accountable, even against their will.

All this spending on the John Milne boardroom, occurred at a time when independent auditors of APS finances were finding APS leaders encumbering amounts in excess of $50,000 dollars "without involving purchasing".

The auditors were justifiably concerned at the lack of standards, lack of accountability and lack of record keeping in the spending of over a billion dollars a year, link.

A question or two is begged. The most important of which is
why the cost overruns on the boardroom were newsworthy
once and are not newsworthy now; now that it can be shown
how bad the overruns really were?