On May 29, 2015 I filed a petition with the Commissioner of Education alleging that in the award of architectural services for the March 15, 2015 $70 million-dollar construction bond the Port Washington School District violated the school districts own procurement policy and NY State General Municipal Law.
The PW School District procurement policy stipulates “to obtain optimal value for expenditure of school district funds.”
State Municipal Law requires “to assure the prudent and economical use of public moneys in the best interest of taxpayers…” to facilitate the acquisition of goods and services of maximum quality at the lowest possible cost under the circumstances, and to guard against favoritism, improvidence, extravagance, fraud and corruption.
The appeal by an ordinary citizen unfamiliar with law requesting a stay was denied for failure, in a timely manner, to join the architect (include the architect in the petition). The appeal itself and its substance was by the Commissioner of State Education accepted to be ruled upon.
This ruling was made July 17, 2018. In the decision the Commissioner admonishes the Port Washington School District, in agreement with the petitioner, that the award was not in keeping with the intent of State Municipal Law.
The awarding of the architectural service was improperly based on a twelve-year-old Request For Proposal for a dissimilar $2.5 million dollar bond whose smaller amount justified a fee of 7 percent.
The petitioner alleged had a new RFP been issued, as required by procurement policy, due to the economy of scale proposals with a 6 percent and possibly a 5.5 percent fee would have been obtained.
The fee for architectural services would then range between $4.20 to $3.85 million dollars. This would have resulted in a saving of between $700,000 -$1,150,000 taxpayer dollars.
In summary, the petition had and continues to have merit. The question is not why did the school administration over a period of over twelve years find such favor with the work one of one architect? The hard-financial question is that this same work could have been obtained with a saving of one million dollars!
The school’s superintendent and particularly the assistant superintendent for business can not either from ignorance or favoritism simply prefer and choose to award work because they are familiar and pleased with the work of one architect.
They do not have the liberty to ignore their very own procurement policy. No! They are required to issue a new Request For Proposal thereby allowing competition. That is State Municipal Law!
The central issue may not be who is culpable for wrong doing. The larger concern and question is that of the incompetence and wastefulness of the Port Washington school administration.
There needs to be accountability. Someone in school administration needs to take responsibility for wasting one million dollars. That responsibility belongs to the Schools Superintendent and clearly to the Assistant Superintendent for Business.
James Ansel
Port Washington
