With the board elections looming last November, member Dr. John Abraham told the MDJ he favored seeking bids on legal services after four new members came aboard in January.
"I think that's good government practice, to bid this out and see what's out there," he said. "A bid may enable the district to get a lower rate for the work."
"I've always supported rebidding this out," he added.
Candidate (and eventual winner) Lynnda Crowder-Eagle correctly and fairly added that rebidding legal services wouldn't necessarily rule out rehiring Brock Clay, but would mean the system would get the best deal possible.
Abraham also said Brock Clay had too much influence over the board. But that was then, and this is now.
FAST-FORWARD A YEAR. The board has bid out its legal services and signed a new contract, saving taxpayers big bucks in the process. NOT!
In actuality, Brock Clay is more controversial than ever. Yet despite its campaign promises, the board has shown no interest whatever in rebidding the legal services contract. That's even though rebidding services on a periodic basis is considered part of "best practices" in the public sector; and even though the board bid out the construction management contract for the first SPLOST, carried it over for the second and would have bid it out for SPLOST III had it not opted instead to move the work in-house.
Ms. Crowder-Eagle says the board has been "too busy" with other items to re-bid the financial services contract. What, too busy to take 30 seconds out of one of its multi-hour marathon meetings in order to make a motion to issue an RFP for legal services? What Ms. C-E's comment means, freely translated, is that the board hasn't yet reached a secret consensus and sprung it on the public. As we have said before, our school board's meetings are not spontaneous, but are staged and rehearsed.
Several board members have been saying since summer that any action on legal services should wait until after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools visit in December, a visit that's not much more than a formality for a generally first-class system like Cobb's.
Meanwhile, with the system's revenues down and its budget strapped, the board should be considering any and all options to save taxpayers' dollars. It whacked hundreds and hundreds of bus stops from local routes during the summer (although it did so with next to no notice to parents). And it's looking at longer school days - even as the board appears to have the votes lined up to pass a costly proposal to lengthen the school calendar to 10 months. Yet it is forgoing the chance to save money by rebidding its legal services. And incredibly, it is going forward with plans to spend $16 million in SPLOST dollars to install highly expensive artificial turf at the system's high school football fields, even in the midst of the most severe economic turndown in 80 years, and even though SPLOST receipts are way down as a result.
There's no question the board must install the turf. It was promised in the SPLOST, after all. But there should be no urgency to do so, considering the economy. And there's no reason why the board should be rushing ahead on turf installation yet dragging its feet on rebidding legal services.
THERE'S NO QUESTION that the board has gotten bad press as a result of some of Brock Clay's advice. But there's also no question that this is a scheming, secretive, duplicitous board that has earned a toxic reputation for itself. (That's probably a big reason that it is having so much trouble getting the Cobb legislative delegation to go along with its priorities.) This school board may well have distorted or ignored some or all of his advice. And Brock likely is too much the gentleman to call out or otherwise embarrass his bosses on the board in such a case.
This is a board that doesn't set policy, preferring to let the superintendent do that. And it doesn't lay down expectations for the superintendent, or likely for Brock Clay either.
So instead of artificial excuses for putting off what should have been done long ago, this board should pick up the ball and run with it: It should seek bids for legal services, and now, not in December or whenever Ms. Crowder-Eagle decides the board's schedule is no longer so "busy" that saving tax dollars has to stay on the back burner. Moreover, every day of delay merely further erodes the public's confidence in this school board.
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As for the school board, anybody can be made to look like a villain when all you hear about them is skewed to one side. And, where has this gotten us all? There was a big stink about the "secret votes" in executive sessions, where, according to the newspaper reports, the board dutifully recorded its every action, and all anybody who wanted to know what was going on had to do is to ask for a copy of the minutes. Thanks to all the uproar about those meetings, the board has stopped keeping minutes of its executive sessions, (because they weren't required to keep them in the first place), so now, instead of more information being avaialble about the board's activities, there is less. Congratulations! Looks like that one sort of backfired.
Another example is all the fuss about a cell tower at a school that's been there for decades. A bunch of selfish east Cobb clowns can't stand the thought of having to sacrifice THEIR view of somebody ELSE'S property, so they cost the taxpayers thousands by suing the school board, and the best they can come up with is that the process the board used was flawed??? These "process hounds" don't give a hoot about the process. It's just easier to villify the board than to put their own selfishness on display front and center.
Add to that the constant inundation from federal and state regulations that public schools have to deal with on a daily basis, and its a wonder they get anything done at all. It takes a lot of time, money, and energy to deal with all this nonsense, especially if you have to hire lawyers to handle it all like everybody does these days. Tell you what.... why don't you (and all the rest of the armchair quarterbacks out there) take a swing at public service, and see if you can do a better job?