Greenwich Roundup: 09/24/11 The Auditorium And PCB Remediation Are NOT Separate Issues, Because Board Of Education Insiders Cover Up Mistakes And Reward Failure

Saturday, September 24, 2011

09/24/11 The Auditorium And PCB Remediation Are NOT Separate Issues, Because Board Of Education Insiders Cover Up Mistakes And Reward Failure

PHOTO: Joe Ross, chairman of the Greenwich High School MISA building committee

The cost to remediate the PCB Contaminated soil at Greenwich High School is going to grow exponentially as town taxpayer take another BOE building committee beating.

The Representative Town Meeting did the right thing Monday in voting for an initial $1.2 million for remediation and more testing and giving a big chunk of that money to the MISA building committee.

The appropriation, that sticks the entire cost to town homeowners, insures that town and BOE officials will cover up building committee negligence, because remediation funds will not come from the budget of the high school's auditorium project, known as MISA.

This, too, is the wrong way to go in Greenwich.

Joe Ross, was heavily involved in the building committee, where millions of cost over runs and screw ups at Hamilton Avenue School that Greenwich taxpayers are paying for with an increased mill rate.

Now Joe Ross, a Tishman Construction Corporation of New York executive vice president is now Chairman of yet another failed Greenwich Board of Education building committee.

The auditorium project is was responsible for testing for contaminated soil, and failed to get the extensive tests that were needed.

When Joe Ross and his construction buddies working the auditorium project discovered the PCB's they did not immediately step back and let local. state and federal officials take over the brown fields at Greenwich High School.

A Greenwich third grader, could make the argument that Joe Ross and BOE officials should have tested the soil before MISA funding was approved.

If the discovery of the PCB contamination came before the town officials had voted to approve roughly $29 million for MISA over two years?

Then Greenwich High School students and teachers would have never been exposed to PCBs.

The town should learn from this and dismiss insiders like Joe Ross who fail, fail and fail the town again and again.

Joe Ross's construction buddies are laughing all the way to the bank as Greenwich homeowners are once again forced to pat through the nose.

Five will get you ten that very highly paid Greenwich Public School administrators have not presented the board with a formal policy that the public schools must test during the planning phases of all projects going forward.

This is because there are no consequences in Greenwich negligence is covered up and failure is repeatedly rewarded.

For once Greenwich should do the right thing and let the costly soil remediation kill the MISA, so that parents learn that supporting very highly paid and incompetent school administrators, as well as, BOE insiders like Joe Ross hurts their children in the long run.

The money approved for MISA should pay for remediation.

Joe Ross, the failed school administrators and the Board of Education members don't even have a handle on how much remediation will cost, yet tey still want to moving forward on blowing over 29 million bucks of hard earned taxpayer dollars.

When more of those GHS test borings come up positive, then the price for remediation climbs exponentially.

It looks like the price could climb into the tens of millions.

Which is going to delay other vital Greenwich projects like the central fire station project for years and years unless Joe Ross's construction buddy screw up pushes up the mill rate once again.

Contaminated soil is no small problem.

Northwest Greenwich residents will be lucky to see their long promised fire station towards the end of this decade.

It is time to clean house at the Greenwich Board of Education and its incompetent building committee. Greenwich deserves better than this.

Greenwich can no longer afford all of these insiders that are sending homeowners to the poor house.

Until we get new people elected to the board of education, the heads of very highly paid school administrators are safe and will not be rolled out of our schools that can't pass the no child left behind standards.

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