I haven’t watched the tape of last night’s Guilford County Board of Education’s debate over a payment plan to build the new Eastern Guilford High School. I plan to, though, because I’ll be interested to see just how board members rationalize (chairman Alan Duncan was singled out in the N&R article) that political fallout over the situation will be on county commissioners.
True, commissioners had the opportunity to pass certificates of participation earlier in the year but got sidetracked by Commissioner Skip Alston, who convceived the idea of pulling existing bond money to help pay for Eastern. Yet the school board’s record on construction projects constantly rears its ugly head, as noted by board member Kris Cooke, the lone dissenting vote on last night’s plan:
Cooke said the board has already been “crucified” by the public for postponing construction at Jamestown Middle and Ragsdale High last year.
“It won’t come back to the commissioners,” Cooke said about possible political fallout. “It will come back to us.”
Duncan disagreed: “This will come straight back to the commissioners.”
This is also interesting:
Some board members resisted approving the plan until they know for sure that commissioners wouldn’t sacrifice other school projects or dip into the district’s future capital outlay budgets. The school board declined in July to approve transferring funds from previous bond projects until members knew if and when the funds would be replenished by the county.
Yeah, but who’s been doing the dipping and the sacraficing lately?
