Coastal voices: School district must spend bond money wisely, locally

I sent the following letter to School Board member Bob Berkowitz:

I enjoyed our conversation this morning regarding the school bond money that we voters approved and the sensible use of those funds.

I first became interested in this issue and quite frankly quite upset when I read an article in Nov. 12 Triplicate that addressed this bond money and the fact that it was planned to award huge contracts at your board meeting Nov. 13 to one of two local architectural firms not from this county. It is a sad commentary that while the local citizens are urged to shop locally, when it comes to the really big money it is most often spent elsewhere.

Upon reading this article on Wednesday I put in a call to a local architect, Charles Slert, and left him a message as to whether he would be interested in this work and if so, was he capable to do this type of work. He returned my call shortly and said yes on both counts — he would be very interested in working on this project and was also capable of performing the architectural work required.

My next call was to contact the editor of The Triplicate, Mr Wiens, and suggest that he consider an editorial about the problems of so many large projects and costly "studies" going mostly to companies and firms outside of Del Norte (the harbor master plan is a good example of this).

I then called Jan Moorehouse and we continued to play phone tag most of Wednesday until we finally made contact late Wednesday afternoon. I discussed my concerns with her of not considering any local architects for the project. Her response was that no one had responded to the ads in The Triplicate requesting bids on the project. She told me that no one had been contacted personally about the project and that the bids received were all due to responses to the published ads requesting bids.

However, she then went on to say that she had spoken about the work with a local architect, Jeff Mitchell, and he was not sure if he wanted to go through all the paperwork requirements. I suggested that as she had indeed spoken with him about the project that perhaps she could give Charles Slert a call. She told me it was not too late for him to become involved if he was interested and that she would indeed call him about it.

After our conversation I re-read the article in the paper and realized that as your plan was to choose a firm the next evening for your project, contacting Charles Slert at that late time probably amounted to "a day late and a dollar short!"

I was very happy to hear from you this morning that it is indeed your intention to do all the hiring for this project from our own county if at all possible, and that no firms would be hired or commitments made until after your next board meeting Dec. 11. Be assured that my wife and I as well as many other people will be at that meeting to assure that every attempt is being made to spend this bond money locally. While today's Triplicate article mentioned that you intend to choose one or both of the firms you have been in contact with in the upcoming weeks to do the bond projects, I am assuming you were telling me the truth when you said that no hiring decision would be made until after your next board meeting.

My final comment is that I hope you spend this huge amount of money wisely. My wife and I are both in our 60s. We have no children or grandchildren in the community. We voted for the bond measure because we think our future is with our children and we want them to get the best and safest education possible. We own two houses so we will be personally paying for this. With this in mind, please choose wisely how you spend my money. If you throw away this money on lawns and fencing trying to make the schools look pretty, I will come to regret my "yes" vote on this school bond.