10-4-04 Here is what we have been able to piece together about the infamous gym at Vasquez High School.
Here is the story of the Gym told in the agendas and minutes of the board meetings.
In summary, the district is throwing away $1.1 million and depriving the Vasquez High School students of the use of their gym for no reason except their own stupidity.
Its now time for the board to stop the
superintendent from taking these rash actions which include the financial
disaster of:
Closing Acton School
Closing the Vasquez High School gym,
Failing to get projects approved by DSA as the law requires,
The district’s
continued operation in secret and flaunting the communities’ demands to see
documents under the Public Records Act,
Stopping the board from acting by
“consensus” in secret serial communication between themselves and the
administration, which violate the law.
On 5-27-99, the gym, listed as Item 7.4 on the agenda, opened bids for a fabric-covered gym. It wasn’t awarded that night nor at the 6-3-99 meeting, but finally the construction contract was awarded per the 10-28-99 minutes, for a total of $467,985.00, which was moved for approval by Steve Harbeson and passed unanimously.
It’s important to note that this bid was strictly for the foundations, utility connections, and the erection costs of the pre-fabricated structure. The structure itself was purchased on 12-9-99 for an undisclosed cost,. Finally on 3-23-00 the agenda for the first time it revealed the gym was financed in 10 annual payments of $63,134.00, but the minutes for the same meeting indicated that the contract needed to be redone. On 5-11-00 the bank required the district to sign an additional agreement to pay all 10 payments whether or not the district obtained funding to build a permanent high school.
At this point, the reference to a temporary gym is deleted in all future minutes and it is referred to as “the gym”. The last reference to “the gym” in the published minutes states that “the gym” is complete.
The school board and the current superintendent are trying to claim that this gym is a portable building and falls under some sort of vague rule that allows it to be used for 3 years and that a 2-year extension applies. Wagner, as usual, has refused to provide any documents supporting this position, or any reference to the Education Code.
The building is in fact a permanent structure built to the uniform building code, which had to be certified and inspected by the school architects and the school’s inspectors. All of this should be within the records that Wagner refuses to release. As the foundation and the utilities component is equal to the cost of the framing (in this case welded steel tubing instead of nailed together sticks) covered by a stressed-skin fabric serving as the walls and roof instead of plywood and roofing paper.
The manufacturer RUBB Inc. has been building these structures for 40 years ranging in size from small buildings to aircraft hangers big enough for a jumbo jet. A number of their buildings just survived the recent hurricanes in Florida and Alabama. The steel structure is designed to last 40 years in a wet environment without maintenance, and in Acton’s dry environment will outlast all of us, and probably our children and grand-children. The skin (fabric) must be replaced every 20 to 30 years, just like other roofs.
The company has available full insulation kits including heaters and air conditioners. In fact, a number of their buildings house oil facilities in Northern Siberia, which gets a little colder than Acton. In no way can this building be called temporary, when in fact they are accepted as permanent structures throughout the world.
As to if the Gym was built to code this is from the Rubb website and this
Q: Is a Rubb Building designed to meet building codes?
A: The Rubb Building range product is conservatively designed to meet local building codes for roof, wind and seismic loads.
Q: My project requires a Professional Engineer's review. Can Rubb provide this?
A: Yes.
here is a photo or the Vasquez Gym in the Rubb site. Note the purple floor
The reason that Bandaras and the prior board played this game was to finance its cost over 10 years without issuing more bonds (COP), which would never be approved. They did it on the cheap, without the necessary heaters, air conditioning, safety equipment and insulation.
The District then failed to apply for a permit from the Department of State Architecture (DSA) as required under Education Code 17730. In fact, this Education Code sites the state’s police authority to require the permits to prove all buildings on school campuses meet appropriate standards for structural integrity. And to show how serious they are, this Education Code makes it a felony to not conform to it.
The architect for the school would also have to make sure that the building was constructed to meet the uniform building code and comply with DSA rules. It seems that Bandaras failed to follow the law and convinced the architect to violate his professional standards, which is apparently malpractice.
Then Bandaras apparently convinced the gullible members of the school board, of which only Steve Harbeson remains, to carry out this fraud on the taxpayers and the community. Now Wagner, without board action, without architectural/engineering reports, and without input from DSA has decided to close the gym, throwing away $1.1 million, and has the audacity to ust this improper closing to recommend a bond election to replace the gym.
Now if Wagner has engineering reports concerning the gym from its original construction to whatever document caused her to close the gym, she should make these documents public under the Public Records Act, which she has steadfastly refused to do. It appears that she has jumped off the cliff again, acting on her own, without board approval, and ignoring the required engineering studies.
What Wagner needs to do is to force the architect to prove that the building was designed to meet the building code and properly inspected. The manufacturer has the engineering drawings on file for the gym, just in case Wagner and architect have lost their copies of the engineering drawings. If the engineer and architect failed to do their work, which is highly unlikely, then they would be liable to the district for both its out of pocket losses, loss of use and punitive damages. Since Bandaras is gone, you can’t fire him, but it should be referred to appropriate legal council to recover damages for his apparent outrageous conduct.
The last remaining board person involved in this disaster, Steve Harbeson, who I’m sure was lied to and who would never knowingly commit a felony, as referred to in the Education Code, should resign immediately, as he should have investigated the facts more clearly before he acted.
Now here is what should be done. Assuming the architect did his job and the inspector did his, there is no safety risk in using the gym, except for some question of padding on the steel frame during cross-court basketball. The district should apply to DSA for approval, which should be relatively simple if the architect, inspectors and contractors did their work properly. Then at a later date an insulation kit could be purchased, and the building turned into a multi-purpose room and gymnasium for use of the students at Vasquez High.
This is only one of dozens of failures of the school’s superintendents and boards. Their performance is so bad, you begin whether they were consciously trying to destroy the school district and blame it on pre-mature unification.
One has to assume either gross stupidity has screwed up the school district since the Duzick controlled board and superintendents took over and spent millions of dollars without taxpayer approval or was it an attempt to destroy unification, which is best exemplified by the story of the gym you have just read.