To briefly recap last week’s Artvoice cover story on schools, we offer the following brief:

The Buffalo Public Schools and the Joint Schools Construction Board control $1.7 billion ($1 billion building project and an annual school budget of $700 million). That is far more than the $300 million for operating the City of Buffalo. Far more than Delphi, Bass Pro, Seneca Casinos, GM, Ford, the Bills, the zoo, etc. Yet out of 164,244 registered voters in Buffalo, only 13,139 people voted in the 2004 School Board election. And in 2001 only 5,526 people voted, less than three percent of registered voters. This is a problem!

The billion-dollar Joint Schools Construction project manager is LP Ciminelli Construction. Basically, Ciminelli is in charge of all construction, choosing subcontractors and is responsible for meeting the scope of each building specification as provided by the architects. Ciminelli also serves as the paymaster to all companies involved in the project. Correspondence over the course of this past year between Frank Sandarelli, the former Supervisor of Building Construction for Buffalo Public Schools, and Ciminelli indicated a persisting pattern of Ciminelli failing to fully meet the required goals as described in the specifications (see Artvoice v4n48 December1-7, 2005). This is another problem!

There is also grave concern that no one on the School Board or on the Joint Schools Construction Board is sufficiently knowledgeable about construction issues. The result is that no one can authoritatively challenge Ciminelli on anything the company does. The School Board attempted to hire someone to represent the school district on the JSCB who would be able to understand the complexities of construction. They chose Steve Rollins, president and CEO of Rollins Construction Management, Inc. and a former executive at Ciminelli. Ciminelli immediately threatened to sue the School Board if Rollins was hired. Still one more problem!

Several people complained also that Ciminelli was failing to meet the goals set for involving minority- and women-owned businesses. This coming Monday Bevlar Associates will be releasing their audit of how well Ciminelli has performed in this regard. The audit, which has been underway since April, is of Phase I of the construction project—nine schools—and word is that Ciminelli is not doing well. Another audit will be released shortly, as well. This one is from State Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s office, and it is an important one since it will determine how the state legislature moves forward with future funding of the Buffalo Schools construction project.

No one is saying Ciminelli Construction is doing anything overtly wrong or criminal, but there are questions as to whether the company has the leadership ability necessary to manage a project this large.

Chris Jacobs, an at-large School Board member who also sits on the JSCB, probably said it best.

“In the past couple of years, Ciminelli cast a lot of the talent out of their organization,” said Jacobs, “and I think that they are now back to being a basic contractor. They are working on a very complex model put together by people who thought outside the box, but those people are no longer at the company. Now Ciminelli is really grappling with how they can move this forward. They may be in over their heads. That’s a real concern I have. I feel that they don’t want to admit that they’re struggling. I want to get them back on track, because I view it as a partnership.”

New York State Assemblyman Sam Hoyt

IT TAKES A NEIGHBORHOOD

If you were to point to one thing that most reflects the failure of the Joint Schools Construction project to operate as the grand vision that it was meant to be, failure to improve neighborhoods is near the top of the list.

As we understand it, the Joint Schools Construction project was conceived and sold to state legislators as something that would not only provide Buffalo children with better schools, but that would also engage other funding streams to improve neighborhoods. Specifically, federal HUD block grant money was to be earmarked for environment and housing surrounding school buildings. This has not been done.

In a phone interview with Artvoice, assemblyman Sam Hoyt was clearly unhappy that this part of the project has until now been neglected.

“Part of the mission of the Joint Schools Construction Project,” said Hoyt, “is to have an impact on the host neighborhoods. If we’re going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in these neighborhood schools, then we ought to make sure the project is also having a positive impact on the host neighborhoods and use this money as a catalyst for enhancing them. We’ve largely failed on that part of the project. And it’s not too late to do much better.

“It’s inexcusable,” Hoyt continued, “that you have abandoned houses and drug houses and problem properties directly next to, or directly across the street from, these schools. A project of this magnitude has the potential to impact those types of neighborhood problems. Leveraging that money to improve the neighborhood should be part of the discussion, and it just hasn’t been.

“It requires Joint Schools Construction working closer with the city-planning department. The project manager, in this case Ciminelli,” said Hoyt, “has a role in making sure that that takes place. The Buffalo Public Schools, the City of Buffalo, the JSC team, and Ciminelli all must come together to make sure that the extraordinary investment we’re making in this school rehab project is actually improving the neighborhood, as well.”

Of course, one has to ask why we are already years into this project and assemblyman Hoyt is only standing on the sidelines making observations. We don’t need disengaged critics representing us, we need action.

HELLO? HUD CALLING!!

About three years ago Mayor Masiello and executives from LP Ciminelli had several meetings with HUD officials, including the head of Community Planning & Development (the division of HUD that administers block grant money) and director of the Buffalo field office, Steve Banko, to discuss the neighborhood renewal portion of the Joint Schools Reconstruction project. In that meeting, HUD suggested that Buffalo invest half of its yearly federal block grant allotment—then totaling about $20 million—in the neighborhoods immediately surrounding those schools being renovated.

According to Banko, everyone at the meetings was receptive. In his mind, the only stumbling block was the Common Council. “There’s a constant pull between the mayor and the Council,” Banko said. “The Council believes that they have claim to the block grant money. So they want to carve up the block grant money, while the mayor is looking to consolidate it in larger chunks.”

But, to Banko, this project seemed like it would make sense to the Council, too. “I thought ‘this is something the council could probably get behind, because sooner or later, every council district is going to have a school that is re-done, and then the money would go into their district and everybody would be happy.’ You devote $10 million each year, and if you were doing two schools a year, then you’d put $5 million in each neighborhood.

“If you recall, last year the kids actually wrote to the mayor asking him to take down some buildings.” Banko was referring to last February, when the work of activists and schoolchildren prompted the city to demolish some dilapidated houses across the street from the newly renovated Harvey Austin School on Sycamore near Walden.

“Well this would’ve done that,” he continued. “You wouldn’t have needed the kids to write to you. You would’ve had the money and you would’ve been implementing the plan that looked at the neighborhood around Harvey Austin and removed risk factors, improved the commercial strips, made façade improvements, cleaned up vacant lots, put in in-fill housing, whatever. And the beauty of HUD money is that we give the local governments a very wide berth in terms of how they’re going to spend it. But the fact is that they didn’t do it.”

Banko laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Common Council. “Everybody was excited about the idea, at least it seemed. Everybody was moving toward neighborhood schools then, so we were thinking that if you built up the neighborhood, that would increase the viability of the school. Everyone thought that if there was one plan that the Council would go for, that would be it.

“But then,” Banko continued, “James Pitts [former council president] went down to Washington and had Hillary Clinton convene a meeting, and he lectured HUD for 45 minutes about dealing with the council instead of the mayor.

“The evolution in Buffalo of how the council carves out their own little portion of [block grant money] to do whatever they want with it, I think that’s fairly unique. They all share responsibility for that project not happening.”

Masten District Councilmember Antoine Thompson

Common council vs. wanamaker

The conversation with Banko made us think of Masten Councilmember Antoine Thompson, who expressed concern to us in a previous interview about the lack of progress in neighborhoods. So we called him up and told him about HUD’s proposal. Thompson’s reaction: “That’s news to me.” Then he pointed his finger at Masiello and Tim Wanamaker, the director of Strategic Planning at City Hall. “Tim Wanamaker hasn’t really been engaged as much as he should or could be with this whole process. This year we asked that they pave the roads and replace the sidewalks around East High School, which was a Herculean task. In cities like Rochester, that sort of thing is automatic. When they build a community center or renovate something, they fix up everything around that site, so it’s not just site-based development, it’s true community development.”

Artvoice asked Thompson where the money for that kind of community development should come from. “I think that it shouldn’t only be block grant money, but also part of the city’s operating budget to fix up the roads, sidewalks, streetlights and sewers around those schools. Additionally, I think the city, the school district and Ciminelli should be applying for further dollars.”

Currently, the city receives nearly $30 million annually in federal block grant money. The process by which that money is divvied up for projects is complicated. According to Thompson, though, “the mayor puts together his block grant budget, submits it to the Council for amendments and approval. Once the budget is approved, though, the mayor can make changes to it all year round, moving money at will.” What Thompson means is that most of the money is put into general categories, such as housing rehab, but the mayor’s office is responsible for developing the specific projects where the money is spent.

“There was an expectation that as we rebuilt the schools, we were going to rebuild the neighborhoods around them. And that has not happened,” said Thompson. “They were supposed to fix up houses, roads and all that other stuff around the schools. This was supposed to be done by the city and Ciminelli.”

Thompson agrees, however, that the Council would probably agree to the plan as originally proposed by HUD, or something similar. “The people who Ciminelli and HUD need to speak to are the mayor and Tim Wanamaker. Those two really make it happen. No Buffalo councilmember that I can think of would turn down $3 million if the administration was going to invest it in their district.”

Tim Wanamaker told Artvoice that the city is using block grant funds to renovate neighborhoods around the schools. “We’re using HOME funds, as well as community development block grants, though not half of what we’re allocated,” says Wanamaker. “It’s up to the administration to decide how much they want to spend in those neighborhoods at any particular time, and so far it hasn’t indicated an interest in doing it too much. I’ll tell ya right now, though, even if we used half of it, that wouldn’t be enough.”

Wanamaker thinks that a project of that scale would require block grant funds leveraged with state and other federal resources, as well as private investment. Wanamaker says that in lieu of such large-scale investment (“You can’t focus exclusively around the schools.”), the city is investing in small-scale infrastructure improvements—demolitions, new sidewalks, new street overlays, new trees and pedestrian lighting. He stands by the theory that such public investment will eventually lead to residents investing in their own properties. “That’s happening right now, as we speak, in neighborhoods where the city is investing,” Wanamaker says. Asked for specific examples, he cited the Cold Springs neighborhood, where the city built ten new houses last year and assessments have increased by about 30 percent.

According to Wanamaker, progress hasn’t been obvious this year because 70 percent of the city’s allocation for demolitions (taken from the block grants) was used to clean up after April’s warehouse fire on Chandler Street.

Wanamaker said that the city is not talking with Ciminelli right now about financing neighborhood renewal. After Artvoice’s conversation with Wanamaker, it was clear that his bottom line was this: “We just don’t have the money right now to spread around to all the schools.”

Buffalo Public Schools Superintendant James A. Williams

Here come duh judge!

So where does our new schools superintendent James A. Williams come down on all of this? Since he’s only been in Buffalo a few months, and since he’s spent half of that time fighting with Buffalo Teachers Federation union leader Phil Rumore, it might be unwise to expect too much from his evaluation of the Joint Schools Construction project. However, it is NOT too much to ask why he continues to be seen around town being wined and dined by Lou Ciminelli. What’s up with that?

“This project is one of the greatest things to happen to public education, and this community should be proud,” said Williams of the JSC. “For the legislators to earmark a billion dollars to renovate every school is remarkable. I was just so excited to come to Buffalo and have this unbelievable project. This is a one-shot deal, and we have to make sure it’s done correctly and that it is working in the best interest of children.”

“The first thing I did when I got to Buffalo,” Williams continued, “was get with our attorney and go through the entire contract. What I noticed was that Ciminelli has a fixed-price contract. In other words, he said ‘I can build and renovate your schools for THIS amount of money.’ That caught my attention. The second thing is that the Board of Education has full authority over this contract.

“Phase II is behind schedule right now. But have you ever built a house? Construction work is complicated. You have dates things are supposed to be completed and you go back and they are not completed. But what I can say it that the buildings I have seen in Phase I are outstanding. I’ve visited all these schools in Phase I and have toured them with the principals.

“I’ve heard there are complaints about Ciminelli Construction not meeting the scope of the project,” said Williams. “I’ve not seen a complaint in writing.” Apparently he never read the many letters written to Ciminelli by his own Buildings Supervisor. And when we asked Mr. Williams about Frank Sandarelli’s letters, he said he never heard of Frank Sandarelli. To give Willliams the benefit of the doubt, it has been suggested that Buffalo Public Schools chief operating officer Roy Rogers might have intercepted the letters.

“Now I’ve had many, many meetings with Ciminelli’s people,” said Williams, “I actually did the punch list at East High School. I actually walked that building in August and there were about 32 minor things that they had to correct. These were things like the hot water in the chemistry lab was using the cold water tap; the doorbell in the front of the school was not working; the TVs were not installed; the chemistry lab had a drainage problem. We had a punch list of 32 and walked through the building.”

Superintendent Williams may have walked through East High School in August, but as of only last week, December 4, Artvoice received the following in a letter about East HS:

On the surface, it’s beautiful. But when you look deeper, the flaws are endless. Soap dispensers never worked. Sensors in sinks suddenly stopped working after Ciminelli turned over the building to the district [yes, that means you cannot wash your hands after using the rest room!]. Keys were never supplied for chemical storage cabinets. No safety stops on the windows (which are single paned and not at all energy efficient). No drains on the emergency eye wash stations (water pours into one of the new cabinets—some teachers have buckets under their cabinets). Poorly draining safety showers. Pillars in the laboratories block the view of students while they’re performing experiments. Flimsy furniture. Cabinets that can be pulled open even when locked. Holes left in the floor from pipes being moved. And most scary, a fine white dust that settles on everything.

Does this sound that we got our 10.5 million dollars worth on this one?

Well, so it looks like Williams kind of failed on the thoroughness of his “walk through.” But hopefully, he will address this weakness. “When we put a punch list in place,” said Williams, “I’m from the environment where the board member of that school that’s in their district, the principal, the engineer, and the architect need to walk that building. And all of them should sign off that the building is acceptable. That’s a procedure that I have not found here. That’s a procedure I want to put in place. The purpose of that is to make sure that we all understand what we are getting—the principal, the engineer, the architect who designed it, the contractor and the Board of Education.”

The quality of Ciminellli’s construction work seems to be only vaguely on Williams’ radar screen, as a kind of abstract procedural concept. “However, that is not to say there aren’t things that trouble me,” said Williams. “The lack of urgency here troubles me. There doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency in this community. We had a press conference in August at the Waterfront school, and all the people at the press conference were employees of construction companies. I felt if we’re going to renovate a school and spend several million dollars, I expect to see this community out there.

“This is the largest economic development project in Western Ohio (sic). This school system is a magnet to improve the economy here. We should be rallying around to make this thing work from an economic standpoint and from an academic standpoint.”

Williams’ stated goal is to revisit the entire building project and re-evaluate the thing.

“A large number of the players who were at the table when this contract was signed are not there. Let’s look at the Joint Board Construction. The mayor, Masiello, is the only original player at the table and he’s leaving. So we’re bringing in a new mayor; I’m new; Betty Jean Grant is new; Chris Jacobs is new; Antoine Thompson is new. So I propose that we take a step back and let’s have a retreat and find out what are the five or six things that we want to accomplish in this process. Then let’s identify those five or six things and then let’s work the plan. Right now we’re all over the place and everybody’s giving advice.

“We have to have a retreat to discuss these issues and make sure we understand what we agreed to in 2001. What did we agree to? Let’s lay it out on the table because I don’t think the Joint Schools Construction Board or the community really understands the contract.

“For example,” he continued, “this is supposed to be a public/private funded project, ninety-four percent public funding and six percent private. The six percent is supposed to be a local share, but the six percent is coming from promised energy savings from Johnson Controls and from interest earned on the public funds that are deposited. I have not seen that any local entity has actually written a check.”

(That is a big issue and Artvoice plans on discussing that in greater depth in later articles.)

“But there’s another piece in the agreement. The city is supposed to renovate houses in the neighborhood where the schools are being renovated. Are we talking about that? No! But I have a beautiful high school there and right across the street I have boarded-up houses. One of our legislators from Albany [not Hoyt] has talked to me and said, and I’m quoting ‘if that piece is not met we will have problems in Phase III.’”

Ah! So here we are back at the neighborhoods again. We asked Superintendent Williams if he feels that Ciminelli Construction is locked in for the entire schools construction project.

“The way I read the contract,” said Williams, “it seems whoever worked this out gave Ciminelli a ten-year contract. But I don’t know the politics well enough to even discuss that. When you talk about $1 billion there are a lot of political issues tied into that and I have not had the privilege to hear all of the discussions on that.

“But we’re changing a culture here in Buffalo, and this culture has been here for forty or fifty years, and when you attempt to change a culture you hurt feelings. People think what they’re doing is right and here’s this guy coming in from outside changing their comfort level. And I’m not pleased with the comfort level. I’m not pleased with the Joint Schools Construction Project because I’m hearing too many criticisms. And every time there are concerns or complaints I have to investigate them. And this time I want to get our house in order—with the city, with the contractor, with the Board of Education, so we can move forward.”

If there is one over arching message that comes across after even a superficial examination of the Joint Schools Construction project, it is this: This project is lacking in leadership. In interview after interview, we have found a succession of people pointing fingers, bumping heads and generally reflecting a situation that can only be classified as confusion. With $1 billion on the table for the city of Buffalo, our school children and our neighborhoods, this is unacceptable.

To be continued...

Writer Laura Legere also contributed to this story. To respond, mail Artvoice or send an e-mail to editorial@artvoice.com.