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How the School Board went wrong and who’s benefitting This is part one on identifying how the Fayette County Board of Education (FCBOE) bonds went wrong, key decisions went awry and those who are benefiting from it all. Please know that this is mainly a critique of the FCBOE members and their actions. I do not want anyone to attribute what I have said about our elected school officials as a negative view on our local schools, principals and faculty. Let it be known I am most impressed with our local principals and faculty members in the Peachtree City area. At the individual school level, they concentrate on educating children. Here is an attempt to dissect a large body of documents and actions into a small column. If you are fairly new to Fayette County, you might wonder how the schools in Peachtree City are so well situated. The answer is a majority of the schools sites were donated by developers. Unfortunately, Fayetteville, with its large tracts of annexations and development, has not been willing to require developers to set aside land for schools to offset their impact on the community. Thus, the burden is on the school system and the taxpayers to locate and purchase new sites to meet demand. In Peachtree City, the developers had to earn their keep, but in the rest of the county they are given a free lunch. The FCBOE, regrettably, elected not to use their powers of eminent domain to obtain sites that would be logistically and economically sound. (Even the harshest opponents of eminent domain recognize the use of this tool to build infrastructure for public schools.) Since eminent domain was absolutely ruled out, the FCBOE forced themselves (and the taxpayers) to join in the high flying real estate circus and literally go from land owner to land owner asking them if they wanted to sell. So instead of strategically using the millions upon millions of dollars we gave them to buy land best suited to meet the logistic needs of the local population centers, they did the reverse. The most glaring error in judgment with land acquisition was the site on Inman Road. Paying $2,910,689 for a site in one of the least populated areas in the county, causing districting shifts and longer commutes throughout the system, is just not acceptable. There was a loud uproar regarding the site, and the FCBOE built a school there anyway. You have two choices there: negligence or corruption. The FCBOE’s own paid consultant, Kelley Carey, wrote the FCBOE Assistant Superintendent of Operations Sam Sweat with the unpleasant news, “You are headed for a bit of a political storm over the two sites [Inman and Rivers], it appears, and I have no way of helping on that front. I would think that the demographics map was a fairly obvious statement of where sites are relative to known growth,” (Email, Subject: Planning, Jun 17, 2007). Mr. Carey even suggested “... perhaps getting out of the other one [Rivers], if the facts so suggest.” The far-fetched logic of FCBOE member Janet Smola illustrates the disconnect by saying, “Additionally, to save funds, when Inman Elementary and Rivers Elementary construction costs soared due to rising development costs, the board decided to reduce the number of classrooms at those schools from 800 to 600, saving the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars while reserving the ability to increase the size of those schools when development in the county picks back up again” (source: Janetsmola.com). Ms. Smola is trying to convince us we actually saved money by purchasing a horrible site for a school at a time when the student population was declining and real estate prices and building costs were high. And somehow she thinks we also saved money by downsizing buildings she admits will have to be expanded down the road? Superintendent DeCotis tripped up at the Chamber of Commerce education forum (designed to promote homeowners paying additional school taxes and not businesses) and said, “But ARC studies show that by the year 2030, we will have the students to fill the schools, and we will be prepared” (Realtors support E-SPLOST, Fayette Daily News, Oct. 3). The year 2030 is 22 years away! Should we be offended that taxpayers of today are paying for facilities for the residents who will move here over the next 22 years? We are also getting a lot less state funding because of the empty seats. The bad decisions, sadly, have turned the FCBOE into one of largest land speculators in the county. Their unwillingness to use the tools given to them by law, their irrational site selections, their ignoring important data trends and their over-purchasing land has the FCBOE holding $4.1 million in excess land. Of course, you have to remember the land was worth $4.1 million BEFORE the current economic crash. Instead of doing what we asked of them, we are left holding excess land purchases on the downside of a painful real estate market. So we have $4.1 million in bond funds, maybe, that is locked into a market crash and will not be available for years. As the value of the dollar declines, we lose even more. Next, there is the issue of FCBOE’s land acquisition version of musical chairs. For some reason, the FCBOE decided to purchase the 60.59-acre Kiwanis Fairgrounds site for $1.7 million to build a 10-acre “bus barn site.” The most obvious problem is they pilfered the funds for the purchase from the bond funds the voters officially approved for other uses. Do you see why I do not get a great level of comfort when FCBOE member Smola tells us there are no specific projects listed in the proposed SPLOST because she wants to have “maximum flexibility” with the funds? A significant amount of land was purchased on Lester Road to build another mega site (elementary, middle and high schools on one site). Mega sites are efficient and economical. The FCBOE said the Lester Road property was suitable for building the schools and purchased the land. Mysteriously, a second engineering report surfaced which said the section of land for the proposed high school (the elementary and middle schools were built) was not suitable. The FCBOE quickly sold that land to a large developer in the county who proceeded to build the Brookview subdivision on it. Apparently, the land was suitable to build on after all. To date, I cannot find anyone who can give me a reason as to why the second mysterious engineering report was created. Who asked for it? It needs to be mentioned the developer was sold all the land for high school but 12 acres. The FCBOE, outside the bond funding requirements — again — used bond funds to secure a site for a non-approved aquatics center (12 acres). This is the same aquatics center Ms. Smola slipped into the SPLOST proposal, claiming it was an urgent need while the economy takes a tumble. Another site for the high school was later purchased on the other side of Ga. Highway 54 for $888,783 in another odd location. I expect what you will see in the future is the FCBOE telling local governments and homeowners in Fayette County they need their excess property rezoned for higher density housing in order for them to reap a price high enough to make their land debts disappear. Of course, such a move will cause other quality of life problems such as traffic congestion, school overcrowding, etc. In the next column, we will look at documented contradictions, tall tales and deceptions surrounding the E-SPLOST and the FCBOE. [Steve Brown is the former mayor of Peachtree City. He can be reached at stevebrownptc@ureach.com.] login to post comments | Steve Brown's blog
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