MARIETTA - The Cobb County school board, in a 7-0 vote Thursday, approved spending $7.7 million to in-source its SPLOST III management program.

A condition of the approval is that the board divides the $7.7 million over five years and approves the $1.54 million each year, said Doug Shepard, chief administrative officer for the SPLOST program.

The action puts school district employees in charge of carrying out the remaining $420 million worth of projects being completed using funds from the third, voter-approved special purpose local option sales tax, or SPLOST.

New hires for the in-house program include three program managers, three construction managers, one purchasing agent, one procurement technician, a department secretary, and the conversion of an existing part-time purchasing agent to full-time purchasing agent.

Shepard said the district will spend an additional $467,056 in startup expenses for the program, as well as $36,000 on three Ford Escapes.

Shepard believes SPLOST program management services can be provided by school district staff for less than an outsourced provider because of the elimination of profit markup and a significant reduction in overhead expenses.

"An outsourced provider will typically incur overhead expenses such as marketing and invoicing that become unnecessary when services are in-sourced," he said. "Since the district employs over 15,000, it can also take advantage of an economy of scale in providing administrative, human resources, accounting, maintenance and technology support to our proposed addition of nine-and-one-half employees for virtually no additional cost," he said.

The board's Facilities and Technology Review Committee initially recommended that the board bring its SPLOST program management in house after outsourcing it for years to the scandal-plagued Facility Group of Smyrna.

Superintendent Fred Sanderson initially disagreed with going in house on SPLOST projects, but the board ordered him to do so. In May he presented the board with a plan for in sourcing, which called for hiring 12 employees at a total cost of $9.13 million. Board Chairman Dr. John Abraham and board member Dr. John Crooks said that number was too high.

The board is already outsourcing three SPLOST III projects valued at $77.4 million. In May, the board hired Brookwood/PBS&J to oversee construction of the ninth-grade centers for North Cobb and South Cobb high schools and a replacement school for East Side Elementary for a fee of $998,800, or 1.3 percent.