School-building
agency halts 97 projects as funds dry
up
Monday, October 03, 2005 • BY
DUNSTAN McNICHOL AND STEVEN CHAMBERS • Star-Ledger
Staff
Hoping to conserve dwindling funds for
schools they can afford to build, officials of the state's
Schools Construction Corp. have ordered architects and
engineers to stop work on 97 projects that were on the
drawing board.
The new order halts progress on jobs the
state already has spent $187 million on to cover land
acquisition and design costs. The controversial decision
also has raised concerns among local school officials, who
fear it will further delay thousands of modern classrooms
the Supreme Court ordered for needy school kids more than
seven years ago.
"This is a decision that makes no fiscal
sense," said David Sciarra, executive director of the
Education Law Center, the Newark not-for-profit that won the
1998 court order requiring the school construction program.
"If the state were serious about efficiently using its
resources they would have completed these
designs."
The work suspension is the latest fallout
from the collapse of the Schools Construction Corp., a state
agency set up to administer a $6 billion overhaul of
hundreds of public schools in 31 needy communities. That
money has all been spoken for, with not even one-third of
the schools built.
At the same time, the agency is
undergoing a complete overhaul in the wake of a series of
reports that found it was wasting millions of dollars
through excessive professional fees and poor management. The
reviews began in February, after a Star-Ledger analysis
showed the first six schools built by the state agency cost,
on average, 45 percent more than 19 schools built without
the agency's involvement at the same time.
In July, members of the reconstituted
schools corporation voted to continue work on just 59 of 266
projects in the works. This week's order clarifies that
decision by ordering professional architects and engineers
to stop working on 97 of the shelved projects that were
already in various stages of architectural
development.
NEW SOURCE OF FUNDING
NEEDED
"The purpose of this suspension is to
ensure that the SCC does not continue to spend dollars on
projects that are unable to be constructed with this round
of funding," Peter Maricondo, the SCC's acting chief
executive officer, said in a Sept. 28 letter to school
superintendents informing them of the new order.
Of the 97 projects affected, 35 are in
the final stages of architectural development -- the
development of designs that are the basis for construction
bids. Those design projects will be finished under the
state's new order. Architects, however, would not be on hand
to do any further work that usually comes following the bid
process.
Another 20 projects will be closed down
when the architects have completed the project development,
but have not started drawing up documents needed to put a
project out to bid. The other 42 projects are still in the
early stages of design work, and will not proceed any
further.
Kevin McElroy, spokesman for the schools
construction corporation, said the state plans to lift the
suspension as soon as lawmakers find a new source of funds
for the program.
"We anticipate, with additional funding,
being able to move these projects," he said.
But officials who have been awaiting the
projects say they fear it will be time-consuming and costly
to restart the projects.
"There's a lot of work that could have
been done," said Richard Shapiro, a lawyer representing 13
school districts in a case seeking a court order to have the
state provide more funds for the building program. "Now it's
going to create even further delays after the money is
awarded."
'IT MAKES NO SENSE'
Passaic Superintendent Robert Holster,
whose district has four school projects suspended under the
order, called the decision "tragic."
"Maybe we should use some of this money
and start building jails for the people who squandered this
money," he said.
In Newark, where work on 11 schools has
been suspended by this week's order, officials worried they
eventually will have to discard work that has already been
done on some of those projects. The state has already spent
$47 million buying property and starting design work on
those schools.
"It makes no sense," said Raymond
Lindgren, assistant to Newark Superintendent Marion Bolden.
"I don't know how you continue with the same architects, and
no architect will pick up a job in the middle."
Michael Harris Spector, whose
architectural firm, The Spector Group, is handling seven of
the suspended projects, said those concerns are
unfounded.
"We just put it on a shelf," he said.
"We'll just bring it back when they tell us to begin
again."
But Spector said he regrets the time lost
to the work suspension.
"I feel terrible that at the end of the
day the losers are not the architects or the New Jersey
Schools Construction Corp., they're all the kids," he
said.
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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