Board of Trustees member Chris Collina, also a pastor of a church renting the old Charlestowne Academy building from the district, has made no secret of his independence from Superintendent McGinley and her minions. Now the School Board has voted for Collins's church to cough up another $600 plus for use of the building over the hours specified.
No one seems to ask the obvious questions, so I will.
Why is this vacant building wasting away in the first place? Why hasn't the district diligently searched for some organization to rent the facilities? In other words, why isn't the district concerned about using its capital resources to pruduce income? It's not like the school's sitting vacant doesn't cost money; it does.
This case in point is yet another example of how the district runs its finances poorly. We can only guess at the problems that we can't see sitting so prominently by the side of the road.
Sunday, March 03, 2013
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
6 comments:
To answer your question, go to the building and see for yourself. Rev. Collins had posted a sign making him the contact person for all entities interested in the building; thus any potential investor/buyer had to call him. He then told the caller the building was not on the market. Rev. Collins is using his role on the school board strictly for his personal gain and to make his friends happy. Cronyism at its worst.
What about the other half dozen or so religious groups that use other school buildings? Who's accounting for them? What about the other vacant schools? These include Lang, Schroder, McClellanville, Fraser, Archer, and the list keeps growing. The cost? Each empty school costs the district as little as $20,000 and $200,000 per year to maintain (insurance, security systems, basic building maintenance, grounds upkeep and utilities). Even the advertised lease for Schoder ($3/sf) was increased 4 times that number when a charter school asked. The district also uses misleading advertising when it wants to in order to discourage interest. Collins and his church's use of district property is a distraction but to make a larger issue out of it is to fall for a diversion from a bigger issue. How badly is CCSD wasting the other assets? Board members have asked for this information but so far have received nothing back. A FOIA request was made for the same last December (more than twice the 45 days the law allows) but the Superintendent's office has yet to respond. - Henry Copeland
Why does Berkeley County always seem to escape this blog (Ethics issues?)?
Berkeley school officials are being investigated. The problem is their counterparts in Charleston aren't. The question should be why does Charleston get a pass from state investigators? Charleston officials were accused of committing the same ethics violations in 2010.
TAG-that's not true. CCSD was investigated for ethics violations-private citizen filed complaint and ethics commission investigated. HdeS Copeland was instrumental in gathering data for the investigation. No violations were found by ethics commission.
CCSD's Legal and PR Departments have more money than the State Ethics Commission and can afford more smoke and mirrors than state ethics investigators can handle. CCSD officials also get away with not reporting their total compensation packages to the same ethics commission. We might venture to say "Anonymous" works for CCSD and is assigned to monitor this site. That is pretty good evidence that CCSD works hard at plugging leaks. Having said that, no violations were found but that didn't mean CCSD didn't push the limit in its support of a sales tax referendum. It just proves CCSD didn't get caught using the available evidence. So far the state ethics commission is just investigating Berkeley. No one is saying they have been caught doing anything wrong yet either.
Post a Comment