Jeffco’s bond program is currently $152M over budget, trending toward $170M, but you wouldn’t know that from Jeffco’s latest Flipbook .
The original Flipbook told voters that Jeffco would be performing $563M worth of projects at District schools broken down into the following categories.
As of the October 2022 report to the CAAC, those $563M projects are now estimated to cost $715M.
That’s $152M over the original budget and the program is not yet complete.
The Moss Adams report came with a set of recommendations. Elements of 2 are highlighted below:
1. Recommendation 4 from the Moss Adams report very specifically stated:
A. To promote transparency and accountability, the District should ensure that all
foundational documents and reporting align and can be reconciled; updates
should be readily apparent in reporting documents through sufficiently detailed
project descriptions.
2. Recommendation 7 from the Moss Adams report very specifically stated:
B. Bond Program and management reporting to stakeholders, including the CAAC,
Board of Education, and community, should be updated to accurately provide
details on all projects as well as changes to project budget and scope from original
expectations communicated to the voters.
The 2016 District Wide Facilities Master Plan (2016 Master Plan) and the “20190110 H Bond Cash Flow (version 1).xlsb” were foundational to the establishment of project scope and budget and the Flipbook was the primary communication tool of the Bond Program to voters and interested stakeholders.
What we are going to see now, more than one year after Moss Adams delivered their damning report, is that Jeffco has not implemented these key report recommendations and continues to go out of their way to hide, obfuscate and deceive the public about key aspects of the Capital Improvement program.
Overall Budget
First and foremost, the latest Flipbook completely hides and ignores the original program budget number of $563M. Jeffco very carefully avoids using the word “budget” in this document, but appears to want to give the community the impression that the “budget” is $825M because $258M were added.
That’s not how budgets work. In 2018 voters were told that $563M of projects were going to be completed with $563M of revenue. The budget is $563M for those $563M worth of projects, no matter how much money Jeffco has or gets. That was the implied contract Jeffco made with taxpayers to obtain bond approval. To now imply that Jeffco is going to complete $563M worth of projects using $825M and attempt to deceive people into believing that is within budget flys in the face of all known business and financial management concepts. In actuality, it implies an attempted cover-up of mismanagement and over-spending.
As Moss Adams very clearly stated, all reporting should align and be reconciled to the original foundational documents. This new Flipbook doesn’t even come close with regard to the program’s overall budget.
Added Projects
Jeffco’s latest Flipbook wants the community to believe that only 4 projects have been added to the program. That is completely false. The fact is that in the October 2022 CAAC report there are 33 projects that have a $0 Original Budget. That means that these projects weren’t part of the original plan and is a number that is far larger than the 4 shown in the new Flipbook.
To make matters worse, the Trailblazer Stadium project is NOT an added project. The Askelson report clearly stated that it was part of the program:
Central sites such as outdoor lab, stadiums and north transportation were not listed in
the flip book; however, the Board of Education was informed these sites were part of
the bond program. Meetings with Board members and the Chief Operating Officer
occurred May 4–11, 2018, to go over project scope in detail that included these central
projects. These projects were also in the 2016 District Wide Facility Master Plan which
served as the foundation for the 2018 Capital Improvement Program.
And if Jeffco now wants to claim that it wasn’t part of the program, what about the other 8 projects that Askelson says were part of the program that were not included in the original Flipbook? Why not show all of these projects, with estimated total costs of $19.5M, in the current Flipbook?
Projects not listed in the flip book:
North area transportation site
Trailblazer stadium
Windy Peak outdoor lab
Mt. Evans outdoor lab
20th & Hoyt
Patterson Cottages
Anderson Preschool
Litz Preschool
Irwin Preschool
In addition, it is an interesting admission that no approval was ever obtained to add the work at 581 Conference Place to the list of projects. Taxpayers were very specifically told that the bond money would be put into schools, yet the $7.4M for the North Transportation center, $4.3M for Trailblazer stadium and $500k for 20th and Hoyt/581 Conference Place were never disclosed to voters. That is the epitome of deception.
Finally, it is also interesting to note that $14.6M of the Jeffco Net project was never approved by the Board to come from the Capital Improvement Program. Read the word salad in the new Flipbook carefully. JeffcoNet project money should never have come from the CIP.
This is nothing but another attempt to deceive Jeffco voters and community members.
Over budget projects
It’s nice that Jeffco is making somewhat of an attempt to come clean with 8 projects that are more than $2M over budget each. But, $2M is just some large arbitrary number. Wouldn’t a more accurate measurement of how well the program is being managed be based on the number of projects that are some percentage over budget? There are currently 51 projects that are more than 50% over their original budget. That is more than 1 in every 5 projects coming in at over 50% over budget. That is just egregious and unacceptable. And every project already includes 10% contingency in the original budget. This ineptitude is what Jeffco is covering up by only showing projects that are $2M over.
To make matters worse, Jeffco wants people to believe that the $11.1M that Charter schools received from their rightful and Board directed share of bond premium and interest (on their own money) is somehow a “variance” and significantly contributes to Jeffco’s over budget bond program. That is far from the truth. That money belongs to the Charter schools and in no way contributes to the $152M in overages in Jeffco’s district run projects. Besides, this $11.1M is shared among 17 schools, so there is no $2M overage at any school. Deception, deception, deception – this new Flipbook is filled with it.
And where did Jeffco come up with the $15,045,000 Original Cost Estimate for the All Weather/Track/Turf Fields? The sum of the Original Costs for these 3 projects as shown in the October 2022 CAAC reports shows the Original Costs to be $23,445,000. Moss Adams said that everything should align and reconcile. This surely doesn’t. Is Jeffco incompetent or trying, once again, to hide something?
And it gets worse. Jeffco wants the community to believe that the original cost estimate for Alameda was $19,055,745. That is a complete lie. The Original Cost Estimate was $18,003,098. The same applies to Jeffco Open, where the Cost Estimate shown in the new Flipbook is larger than what was originally shown to voters in 2018. Once again, the new Flipbook is filled with lies and deception.
Lack of Costs by School and FCIs
The original Flipbook showed taxpayers estimated costs and FCIs by school as can be seen in the image above.
The most recent Flipbook does not.
This is not the transparency taxpayers were promised and is deceptive in that the community cannot determine if the projects and program is on budget and on track to deliver what was promised.
The latest Flipbook embodies everything that is wrong with Jeffco’s Capital Improvement Proram. It has inaccuracies, lies, deception, the removal of critical information people need to make their own evaluation of whether the program has been successful or not and doesn’t follow the Moss Adams recommendations of having data align and be able to be reconciled.
Jeffco schools should never be trusted again when they come and ask for another bond. Jeffco schools has not fulfilled its promises of transparency, honesty and good fiscal stewardship of our money.
