District’s Choice of Its Own Crews Draws Questions

The chairman of the citizens’ committee charged with overseeing Proposition BB spending demanded in-depth information Wednesday to justify a recommendation that massive air-conditioning work be performed by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s own team, rather than by one of four outside bidders.

“It just defies logic,” said Steven Soboroff, Mayor Richard Riordan’s appointee to the watchdog panel. “You would think that a private company . . . would be able to do it for less money.”

The district’s attorneys are reviewing whether some of the detailed financial and project information Soboroff has requested can be released because the companies involved have asked that it be kept private.

Air conditioning makes up about 10% of the work planned with funds from Proposition BB, the $2.4-billion bond measure approved by voters in April.

Committee member Tyler McCauley, Los Angeles County’s assistant auditor-controller and a member of a school district panel that evaluated bids on the $200-million air-conditioning job, defended the district panel’s work. He said Soboroff was wrong to tear down a process he knew little about.

McCauley noted that the district panel’s recommendation did not involve district employees, but instead relied on the 10 construction crews the district has hired to complete repairs and upgrades funded by the bond measure. Air conditioning was originally part of their contracts, and most of the firms the district hired have started designing systems for schools.

“We’re not talking [about comparing] public to private contractors here,” McCauley said. “It’s competitively bid either way.”

For months, Soboroff had recommended that the district give the air conditioning work to a consortium, Energy Alliance, whose unsolicited proposal was billed as faster and cheaper than the district’s plans, setting a goal of one year. Three other outside bidders later joined the competition.

The district’s teams estimate it will take 21 months to complete all schools, down from an earlier projection of three years. McCauley argued that the 21-month time frame would leave very few campuses to suffer through more than one more hot summer.

Furthermore, the district project managers were by far the lowest bidders when related work--including electrical upgrades and trenching for technology lines--was included. The evaluation indicated the project managers’ combined estimate at $216 million and the lowest of the outsiders, Energy Alliance, at $264 million.

The related work included in the final bids was another point of dispute for Soboroff, who said he considered the tasks add-ons that possibly were intended to dilute the ability of the energy companies to bid on their area of expertise.

The district’s new finance czar, Hugh Jones, told the committee Wednesday that he shared some of Soboroff’s questions and plans to spend the next 10 days reviewing the evaluations before making his own recommendation to the school board, which will make the final decision.

Jones said he wanted to make sure all the competitors were bidding on exactly the same work. He said he would also examine both the quality of equipment each planned to install and what the long-term maintenance costs would be.

Others have raised questions in the past about the plan by the district firms to install mostly window air conditioning units, which can go in faster than central air but may cost more for both electricity and repair.

In other action, the BB oversight committee on Wednesday:

* Agreed to limit its review to bond-funded projects costing more than $100,000 or those involving at least 10 schools, unless a two members specifically request otherwise.

* Agreed to review changes in the work contracts with each school in various circumstances, including when needs have changed because of class-size reduction and when private donations have paid for projects.

* Delayed a decision on a proposal to set aside $7 million of the campus discretionary funding provided under the bond for creating parent centers, health clinics or other needs identified by the regional groupings of schools known as clusters.