Dear Editor,
A recent editorial debated the concept of the school district
moving it’s administrative offices from
”
Siberia
”
(out by the outlet stores) to either a location by the South
Valley Middle School or to a location being developed by South
County Housing at the
”
Cannery Project
”
on Lewis Street in/near the
”
new
”
downtown. Both locations humanize the administration and
centralize the function.
Dear Editor,
A recent editorial debated the concept of the school district moving it’s administrative offices from “Siberia” (out by the outlet stores) to either a location by the South Valley Middle School or to a location being developed by South County Housing at the “Cannery Project” on Lewis Street in/near the “new” downtown. Both locations humanize the administration and centralize the function.
The Dispatch identified the merits of the move and pointed out your collective thoughts that the cost of each option should be carefully weighed in making such a momentous decision. First blush put the middle school site as the least expensive – after all the district owns the land and construction should be equal at both sites, but …
Let’s not forget one fundamental thing about the construction of ANY public facility. Whether it be a road, sports park, police station or library, if government builds it, it will be over budget and past due date. It is to be expected that the new administrative offices would be 40 to 100 percent beyond budget and delivered in no less than than 50 percent greater time than the the original schedule if built by the school district’s bureaucratic process. Anybody reading this paper knows that. So, whatever projections come from the bureaucrats must be tempered with our experience.
So, what if the district agrees to buy, at a fair market price, the facility that South County Housing is in the process of building. The price is negotiated at the market rate and the product is built to specifications agreeable to the school district and the money is not paid nor the keys are handed over until the product satisfies the customers expectations, both in the quality of the product and the date of the delivery?
This is how the rest of the real world works. Would it be too much to ask that he school district not be burdened by the absolute blasphemy of government waste and move at the more efficient building program of the private sector?
I have dream that all public construction could be handled this way and the great financial resource of wasted construction be diverted to teachers and students.I have a dream that transportation, janitorial and landscape maintenance be removed from the bureaucracy and out-sourced to our own community. Only then will the dollars meant for education be better spent on education.
Jeff Martin, Gilroy
