Agency
chief puts burden on districts waiting for
schools
Design and site location would
fall to them
Saturday, March 04, 2006 • BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL •
STAR-LEDGER STAFF
Newark and other communities scheduled to
get hundreds of new schools under a 1998 state Supreme Court
order will have to take up the responsibility -- and
possibly some of the costs -- of finding sites and designs
for the new buildings, the new head of the state agency in
charge of the school building program said
yesterday.
"Local school districts and
municipalities cannot be mere takers of these facilities,"
said Barry Zubrow, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was
appointed chairman of the state Schools Construction Corp.
last month. "Design, construction and siting need to be
placed in the very hands of the people who are using the
schools."
Zubrow's comments, in a speech to the New
Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association in Trenton,
were the first indication of what recommendations he might
include in a report on the school program he is scheduled to
deliver to Gov. Jon Corzine on March 15.
Zubrow is the latest state official
dispatched to repair the widespread mismanagement that has
plagued the construction corporation since it was
established three years ago.
The overhauls began a year ago, after a
Star-Ledger analysis found the first six schools built by
the state agency cost, on average, 45 percent more than 19
schools built by local school districts at the same
time.
The state Inspector General later
reported that mismanagement and gaps in oversight left the
agency vulnerable to "waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer
dollars."
Last July, after realizing the $6 billion
lawmakers had allotted to the program was about to run out,
the corporation selected 59 projects for a funded "capital
program," and shelved hundreds of others in various stages
of development.
"We are midstream in a $6 billion
construction program that has gone off track," Zubrow said.
"We need to fix it and make sure the schools that are within
the capital program get built in a timely and efficient
manner."
Last month, state officials estimated it
would cost more than $12 billion to complete the suspended
projects.
Zubrow said he does not expect to seek
additional funds for the school building program until he
has completed the ongoing overhaul of the agency's
management and operations.
A centerpiece of that reform, he said,
will be a return of many responsibilities to the municipal
governments and school districts in which the new schools
are being erected.
Specifically, Zubrow said he plans to
raise the $500,000 cap on jobs that can currently be
delegated to local officials.
He also plans to give local officials
greater responsibility for identifying affordable and
appropriate sites for the schools the state is going to
build for them. And future decisions on which schools might
be built first could rest partly on whether a community has
cooperated in making appropriate and clean sites available
or is relying on the state to prepare all the
land.
"I think part of the discussion is going
to come from a question of who would pay for the land and
who would have the responsibility for some of the ancillary
costs," he said.
The SCC has spent $387 million acquiring
land for school projects. But millions of that money was
spent on sites for schools that are no longer slated to be
built, and many sites supplied to the state have been
contaminated with toxins that required millions more dollars
in cleanup costs.
David Sciarra, the attorney who has
pressed the Abbott case on behalf of students in the needy
communities, embraced Zubrow's strategy for shifting
responsibilities back to local officials.
"I'm strongly in favor of the state
setting up a framework in which the local school district
and the municipalities are required to come up with clean
sites in good locations at a reasonable cost as a
requirement of local land use planning," he said. "The state
should be able to say 'If we're going to pay for this school
and build these schools, you've got the responsibility to
make sure you deliver sites that are
appropriate.'"
Dunstan McNichol covers state government issues. He may
be reached at dmcnichol@starledger.com or (609) 989-0341.
© 2006 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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