Guilford County Schools has two pools of money from school bonds – $300 million from the 2020 election and $1.7 billion from the May 2022 election for a grand total of $2 billion.
Now, nearly two years after the 2020 bonds passed, a Joint Capital/Facilities Committee has been formed to oversee the expenditure of the $2 billion and try to address expected cost overruns.
The committee made up of county and school officials met last week for the first time when school staff and consultants briefed the committee on current school designs for the 2020 voter-approved projects.
Site work on six of those projects is expected to begin by the end of the month – and staff and industry experts spoke to the committee about cost concerns due to inflation, supply-chain issues and labor shortages among other factors.
When Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston named the commissioners to serve on the committee, he only put Democrats on the committee. Republican Commissioner Justin Conrad said that suggested to him that Alston didn’t want anyone asking “the hard questions” about estimated large cost overruns for school projects.
The members of the committee include Alston, who’s co-chair, and Commissioners Kay Cashion, Carly Cooke and Carlvena Foster, as well as Guilford County Manager Mike Halford. Board of Education members serving on the committee include Deena Hayes, who’s co-chair, and Bettye Jenkins, Winston McGregor and
Pat Tillman. Guilford County Schools Acting Superintendent Whitney Oakley is a member as well.
The current plan is for the committee to meet monthly, at least through December.
Most of the early discussions will be on how the school system should spend the $300 million approved by voters two years ago, as well as how to deal with what are estimated to be large cost overruns when compared to the initial estimated costs of those projects.
Alston said that, when deciding the membership of the committee, he didn’t think along political lines but instead only considered which commissioners would be most suitable due to experience with education and other factors.
Alston also said that other county commissioners – and anyone else – are welcome to attend the meetings.
“The meetings are public,” Alston said. “Anyone can come.”
This ought to be a humdinger. Can’t wait to see the waste this bunch will come up with. Kind of reminds me of Washington DC.
The “Rule of the Committee” is, that if anything is any good, everyone will jump in and ruin it.
Skip Alston ,,, his own self importance is a joke. He will ruin this county before he is through if somebody doesn’t stand up to him.
The Guilford County Commissioners $2 billion school bond is a cross between a Jerry Lewis telethon (“do it for the kids”) and a mugging. However much taxes go up, however large the bond issue was, it will never be enough. We are in the worst inflationary period of the last 40 years and that pressure on taxpayer’s personal finances counted for nothing with the county commissioners and the people who voted for the bonds not knowing, or maybe just not caring, where the money comes from. It didn’t take long for the stories about higher than expected costs to come out, and next we’ll hear reports that schools that are deteriorating faster than expected. And where was there any discussion at all of county priorities other than the schools when the county schools and the commissioners were campaigning openly for the bonds? The $2 billion bash will come at a cost. You can have some combination of either neglect of other parts of the county budget, cutting county services to meet debt service, or increasing taxes and float more bonds. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see what will come next in a couple of years.
My concern has always been lack of specifics and truthful estimates. We don’t even know what the priorities are and how it will they get done? So much money. Many thanks are going to Skip Alston and County board who voted to create and fund municipal water for Summerfield and multi family housing — but northwest does not even have future school sites. Voting to do everything possible to take population from 11,000 to 40,000 and no public school sites. Public Hearing and Master Plan are missing.
Why have they waited 2 years to start doing something. They were whining this year they had no money when they could have been doing something. Materials were cheaper 2 years ago also. Where was the committee then? I don’t trust Skip Alston? To suspicious with only democrats on committee.