We can now add CFO Copland to the long list of people who have deceived the Board of Education on multiple aspects of the Jeffco Schools Capital Improvement Program.
On June 7, 2023 she included the following slide in her budget update presentation.
She states:
“The district is affirming its commitment to contribute at least $138M towards the Capital Improvement Program over six years, additive to the bond proceeds and interest on those proceeds.”
Unfortunately, $138M in Capital Transfer is NOT going into the Capital Improvement Program.
Here is an image of the CORA response I got from Jeffco when I asked for the data that CFO Copland used to create her chart.
You’ll see the annual Capital Transfer amounts.
However, this is NOT the amount that was transferred into the Capital Improvement Program.
The amount transferred into the CIP is less than the amount of Capital Transfer due to the fact that the capital transfer amount must also be used to pay for Certificates of Participation and starting this year the payment on the Arvada Community Pool loan.
Even former CFO Askelson recognized this with her bond review document as well as Tim Reed with his monthly CAAC reports.
Here is Askelson’s report:
And here is Reed’s October 2020 Board presentation mentioned by Askelson:
You can see that Reed is telling the Board that $41.8M for FY 20 and FY 21 have been transferred into the Capital Improvement Program ($20.9M/year)
That does not align with what Copland recently told the Board in 2 ways.
First, Reed told the Board that the first year of Capital Transfer into the CIP was FY 20, not FY 19 that Copland is telling the Board.
Second, Reed, with the concurrence of Askelson, told the Board that $41.8M was transferred into the CIP for FY 20 and FY 21, not $48.7M that Copland is telling the Board.
Copland is making things up. She is flat-out deceiving the Board. There is something very, very wrong with that. She gets paid a lot of money to make sure numbers are correct and that the information she gives to the Board is accurate. Her June 7, 2023 presentation was pure deception. And, since I sent her an email about this well before the Board meeting she was aware of potential inaccuracies.
Yet, she went and presented the false information anyway. That’s lying in my book.
The truth is that now, due to the COPs and the Arvada pool, Jeffco will be short-changing the Capital Improvement Program more than $15M in promised Capital Transfer and Copland is trying very hard to hide that.
What else is she hiding in her fairy tale revisionist history and shell-game financial accounting? There is no excuse for any of this.