Facilities Concerns

This was posted today on a thread from April of 2007. I am moving it here because it is relevant to today's issues.

"At a past board meeting you had questioned the relationship between Sodexho and some of their suppliers, namely Tremco Roofing. Will more people are starting to question those types of relationships and the impact on our taxpayers. Unfortunately, the OASD learned an expensive lesson with this relationship and more needs to be done to stop it throughout our state. Efforts are currently underway to investigate the Waste and Misuse of Taxpayers Moneys on School District Roofing Projects in other states.

http://diana-vice.blogspot.com/

http://schoolroofingscam.blogspot.com/

Tue Feb 12, 01:13:00 PM "

As a matter of fact, I was contacted by a gentlemen from another school district looking for information on SODEXHO several months ago. A couple of years ago, when a question came up about SODEXHO and the roofs, I did a little internet digging on my own and found several complaints and lawsuits by school districts around the country. The biggest was by the State of New Jersey's Department of Public Instruction. Apparently many school districts had used SODEXHO and Tremco and were bilked for millions.

Talking to people within our district about SODEXHO and Tremco, I found out that when SODEXHO bids a job, in our case roofs, the bidding is arranged so that only a company that deals with Tremco products has a chance to get a complete bid in. Smaller contracting companies have to get information that takes several days to weeks to compile and end up missing the bid deadlines. SODEXHO and Tremco basically chase local companies away like Walmart does with bringing in their own contractors and not using local labor.

In addition, when bids are made and lists of materials submitted and approved, because of hazardous materials regulations, certain materials cannot be kept by the school district. If you have a job done on your house and pay for the materials, you keep what you pay for or argue for a refund of that material. Sodexo/Tremco can find that they have excess materials and regulations say that we can't keep certain things, so they take the extra with them when they leave the job. I was told that the extra was resold by Tremco for a profit. While someone could argue that is a rumor, several complaints and lawsuits say otherwise.

As this person points out, we need to be very careful how we spend tax dollars and take credible information citizens bring to us a little more seriously so that we do not have another SODEXHO disaster. We also have to keep in closer contact with our buildings, whether it is annual tours by district administration and/or BOE, or periodic reports by the maintenance and custodial staff as to the conditions of the buildings.

If this isn't already being done, I would strongly urge a comprehensive preventative maintenance program overseen by the district's maintenance and custodial departments, particularly those who are assigned to specific buildings as they know best what is going on in their buildings. This program should also include some kind of accountability plan to ensure maintenance is done in a reasonable time and not let maintenance orders get lost in an out-of-state computer network like SODEXHO used with us.

There are good models out there as simple as what we used in the Army with lists of what needed to be done at what intervals and a computer system that put regular maintenance on a calendar for each building (in my case it was transport vehicles). Inspections would include checking a furnace, HVAC, or a roof once/twice per year or checking flooring equipment once per quarter/month/week. Some of this seems too basic to bother with, but we have a large district with numerous buildings, and the plan in place to this point hasn't worked out so well.

Of course the actual plan should be worked out with those who know our buildings best, I am only offering a suggestion that could save time and money. I welcome any input from those in our maintenance and custodial departments to weigh in.