In a stunning display of fiscal irresponsibility and reckless leadership, at October’s RCSD Board meeting, Directors Barke, DeMarco & Maynard voted to approve a $61,000 expenditure for a Pickleball conversion project, including basketball and tennis court resurfacing – ON A BID THEY HAD NEVER SEEN.
General Manager Mendoza REFUSED to provide any detailed bids to the Board, despite repeated objections from Directors Shade & Searles.
What possible justification could there be for withholding that information? What was Mr. Mendoza hiding from his own Board members – and the community? And why?
At the minimum, every Board member should have the opportunity to review the bids and carefully scrutinize each line item For example, Mr. Mendoza mentioned, when the bid is awarded, he MIGHT ask them to “float a portion of the court because there’s some low spots.” MIGHT?
If there are low spots that need floating, shouldn’t that have been included in the bid? How much would that cost? Would there be a work-order surcharge to add that on? Would that change the overall cost from one vendor to another? Isn’t this a line item that should have been in front of the Board members? That’s just one example of the deficient information 3 Board members were more than willing to overlook.
In addition, the bids were incomplete in the most fundamental way—they did NOT include the cost of effective noise mitigation, potentially increasing the project cost by up to 30%, and ignoring their own sound consultant’s recommendations for proper noise mitigation.
Despite Director Searles repeated objections to pause the vote stating, “We said we would address our budget before we allocated the money, and we did not do an amended budget. We’re just going ahead and spending the money without the budget or a capital plan. I don’t want to be spending extra money without having a full budget review of it.”
Again, something certain Board members committed to and subsequently ignored. The wasteful spending is unconscionable.
The lack of sound decision making of this Board is beyond comprehension. It is clear the RCSD Board places very little value on their words and commitments, leaving a trail of broken promises behind them. How can we, as a community, ever trust anything they say?
I would appreciate your consideration and publication of the attached article in The Sun newspaper.
Thank you for your time,
Michele Fieldson
Rossmoor
