Something very strange is happening with the FF&E projects in Jeffco’s Bond program.
In December, there were 63 listed FF&E projects on the CAAC report. 12, or nearly 20%, with costs of $3.2M, had no Original Budget, meaning they were originally unplanned and out-of-scope. If you look through the CAAC notes you will see that there has never been a discussion related to these project additions. This is not the “monitoring” that Jeffco taxpayers were promised when the District was campaigning for bond approval. These are the “winner” schools.
Yet, they aren’t the only “winner” schools. There are an additional 11 schools with current costs more than $200,000 over their original estimated budget. Variances for these projects range from 81% over budget to 1950% over budget (that number is not a typo). Is this just a result of bad estimating or are these schools getting more than they were originally scheduled to get? Who approved these additions and overages?
It would be one thing if the vast majority of “estimating” errors were all in the same direction, but unfortunately that’s not the case. There are 14 schools with Current Estimates more than $200,000 less than the Original Estimate. Cost variances for these schools range from 25% to 80% less than the original. This far exceeds what anyone could reasonably expect to see from good purchasing practices. These underages are representative of schools not getting what they were originally scheduled to get. These are the “loser” schools. Once again, what is the process for determining and approving these shortfalls?
As you can see from this spreadsheet, extracted from the December CAAC notes, something is not right regarding FF&E projects. The degree of variance is truly incomprehensible. Are there “winners” and “losers” or is this an indicator of an unbelievable level of incompetence? Either way, this is not right and shouldn’t be tolerated.
Taxpayers were promised accountability and transparency. Unfortunately, because these projects can be “broken” up to be under $500,000, they never show up before the Board. But, someone knows what is happening here and the winner and loser schools, along with taxpayers, deserve to know what is going on.