HBCSD Corruption
Fact 16
Fact #16:
HBCSD SPUN information and omitted relevant information regarding the Facility Planning and Advisory Committee work from 2013 to 2014 in Chapter 7, page 7-4 of the Environmental Impact Report for the reconstruction of North School:
“The District formed the Facilities Planning Advisory Committee (FPAC) with the directive to find the most viable use of the North School site. In April 2013, the FPAC presented four options to the District Board of Education to repurpose the North School site (discussed below) to reduce District overcrowding, FPAC’s recommendation was to either reconstruct the existing North School site with new facilities (see Alternate 2, below) or explore the sale of a portion(s) of the North School site and use the funds for new property acquisition (Alternate 4).”
CORRECT INFORMATION:
1. This is a misleading statement in that the Facilities Planning Advisory Committee (FPAC) sounds important but was in actuality ridiculously inadequate as a determinator of district facility policy. Please see Fact #7.
2. Some FPAC members were very unhappy with the facilities process. Please see a resignation letter written by an FPAC member to the HBCSD school board, but never sent.
3. Basically, the FPAC members have NO prior KNOWLEDGE and are given NO background of the history of past HBCSD facility issues and decisions.
4. Meetings are not recorded, or video tapped. FPAC meetings are held in a small conference room in the interior of Valley School. The door to the conference room is kept closed during meetings.
5. Only two or three community members are present. They are not allowed to ask questions or make comments during meetings. Community members are only given three minutes to speak at the beginning of each meeting. The FPAC members’ information and emails address are not made available to the community for further communication.
6. The first one- and one-half hour meeting (6:30pm – 8:00pm) meeting is a meet and greet and an examination and discussion of Decision Insite’s 2012 Executive Insite Report for Hermosa Beach. Decision Insite’s 2012 Executive Insite report made no sense and was later found to be substantially incorrect in its projections. Please see Lie #21.
7. FPAC members are NOT GIVEN either the district’s 2002 Facilities Master Plan nor the 2009 Update to the 2002 Facilities Master Plan (HBCSD paid architects Dougherty and Dougherty approximately $100,000 for an update to the 2002 FMP which was promptly shelved. Was this a way for school board members to throw some extra money Dougherty and Dougherty's way as an "off the books" reimbursement for the work they did regarding the gymnasium at Valley School?).
8. In 2013, the Facilities Planning and Advisory Committee was given an estimate of $14.9 million and 30 months by the district’s hired expert Paul Bunton of BCA Architects to completely reconstruct North School. In the same report, Paul Bunton gave the FPAC members an estimate of $10.9 million and 20 months to modernize North School. The FPAC used these estimates in order to make their recommendations to the school board in April 2013. Given the small difference of approximately $4 million dollars that the FPAC was given between completely reconstructing North School and just modernizing the campus the FPAC recommended to school board members that they completely reconstruct North School. Please see: Fact #2, Fact #3, Fact #4, Fact #5 and Fact #6.
9. According to an estimate by independent construction firm, Juge Construction, North School would only cost $6.2 million to renovate including building a brand-new additional administration and classroom building.
10. In 2013 the estimate given by Paul Bunton, the district’s hired expert, to fully reconstruct North School was $14.9 million dollars. In 2014 the Long Range Facilities Master plan authors GKKWorks estimated that the average cost to completely rebuild North School as being $32,378,954.
11. The reality in April 2021 was that North School cost approximately $29 million dollars and took approximately 54 months NOT $14.9M and 30 months to completely reconstruct.
12. Monique Ehsan, FPAC Chair, April 10, 2013 HBCSD School Board meeting: … “Ah, what we learned from um, research by an outfit called Decision Insite, is that by 2017 the family household population will increase by 5.8%.”
NOTE: Decision Insite’s Executive Insite Report predicted that in five years, by 2017, the population of Hermosa Beach would be 20,357: an increase of 752 people over DI’s claim of 19,605 people in 2012. What would account for the additional 752 people increase in population of Hermosa Beach in only five years? Where were the extra 752 people going to live since there were no large new housing projects planned for Hermosa Beach?
NOTE: Decision Insite’s Executive Insite Report predicted that the number of occupied households in 2022 would be 10,273. The actual number of occupied households in 2022 was 9,130, a difference of 1,143 less occupied households than was projected by DI in 2013.
NOTE: The ACTUAL population of Hermosa Beach in 2017 was 19,671; a decrease of 77 people over five years according to the CA Dept of Finance. The CA Dept of Finance reported the population of Hermosa Beach as being 19,748 in 2012.
12. Monique Ehsan, FPAC Chair, April 10, 2013 HBCSD School Board meeting:
“Modernization entails the following with regard to the classroom buildings, we are looking at buildings that date back to the 1940s and 1960s, so infrastructure as you can imagine is very old. These buildings would have to be taken down to their shells and then built back out. Um, however, the shell is made of masonry walls, and the only way to modernize masonry walls is through seismic retrofitting and possibly construction adjacent reinforced concrete walls.”
NOTE: To our knowledge there were no professional engineers who evaluated the North School buildings before Monique Ehsan made this statement. HBCSD did not pay for an independent assessment of North School seismic integrity as did the City of Hermosa Beach for the Community Center in 2015. The Community Center was designed and built by the same architect and engineer as was North School. The Community Center passed an ASCE 31-03 Phase 1 Structural Seismic Evaluation Report by John A. Martin in 2015. It is therefore very likely that North School would have the same positive seismic assessment as the Community Center. Did the district’s hired “expert” consultant, Paul Bunton of BCA Architects, who is not an engineer and is not qualified to make statements concerning a structural assessment of North School buildings, make these statements to Monique and to the rest of the FPAC members who were evaluating North School?
Please also see Legal Complaint against Paul Bunton of BCA Architects by San Diegans for Open Government, Case #37-2012-00101391-CU-MC-CTL in San Diego Superior Court.
NOTE: North School was built to Field Act strict seismically safe specifications. It is therefore considered to be seismically safe AS IS for district students by the CDE according to CDE code #17280.5. North School is also considered by the CDE to be a grand-fathered-in campus, which means it is code compliant as is for district students.
13. Monique Ehsan, FPAC Chair, April 10, 2013 HBCSD School Board meeting: “We would convert one building into the multi-purpose room, so that we would have a community space for our school…”
NOTE: North School has a multi-purpose that has been used as a toddler room by Childrens’ Journey. It can easily be cleaned-up and reused as a multi-purpose room again.
14. Monique Ehsan, FPAC Chair, April 10, 2013 HBCSD School Board meeting: …”We asked ourselves, ah, does modernization meet our project facility needs for enrollment trends? It does, we could establish, under modernization 432 seats which is adequate. Um, would there be enough classrooms? Yes, there would be 16 classrooms. ‘Revenue Potential’; we think we could carve out space for a preschool for instance…” “Capacity, yes, enough classrooms, however no library or cafeteria…”
NOTE: This is an incorrect statement. North School has a cafeteria, it doubles as the multi-purpose room which is normal for a small elementary school. North School also has a kitchen with a serving bay.
NOTE: Any classroom can be turned into an elementary school library.
NOTE: HBCSD hired “expert” was supposed to have given the FPAC members a tour of North School. Did he leave out the kitchen and multi-purpose room on the tour?
15. Monique Ehsan, FPAC Chair, April 10, 2013 HBCSD School Board meeting: “Um, ‘Costs’, projected hard and soft costs for modernization is $10.9 million. This information provided by BCA Architects.”
NOTE: The Juge Company gave an estimate of only $6.2 million dollars to renovated North School in 2017. In their estimate the Juge Company included a brand-new administration and classrooms building. Juge Construction Company also renovated Valley School for HBCSD in the 1970s.
16. Monique Ehsan, FPAC Chair, April 10, 2013 HBCSD School Board meeting: “So what does new construction entail? New construction entails creating an entirely new foot print…” “The projected costs by BCA Architects is $14.8 [$14.9M] million dollars.”… “The time frame we were given by BCA Architects is 30 months.”
NOTE: One year later, in 2014, the district’s hired architects, GKK Works, estimated it would cost $34M to completely rebuild North School. A difference of $19.2M.
NOTE: Of course, the FPAC members would recommend the district completely rebuild North School if they were told that there was only a $4 million dollar difference ($10.9M vs $14.8M) between renovation and rebuilding North School. And of course, the school board members would then have the “cover” (excuse) they needed to demolish and rebuild North School according to the cabal’s plan of a quid pro quo of a brand-new unneeded campus if the district did not exercise their contractual rights to use the Community Center classrooms.
NOTE: July 19, 2014 – Email from HB Mayor Michael DiVirgilio re district usage of the Community Center.
“The city is not aware of any prohibition that would prevent us [the city] from entertaining requests about the Community Center from the District, or from any entity for that matter. However, as you saw during our most recent joint meeting, neither the City nor the District are interested in considering the Community Center [as a lower cost alternative for taxpayers AND immediate relief for HBCSD students and staff].”