Editorial: Public has right to know truth about Gaston contract

A majority of Fresno Unified School District trustees appear incapable of sorting out the most important issues in the awarding of a nearly $40 million contract to Harris Construction to build Rutherford B. Gaston Middle School.

We say this because of a letter to the editor by trustees Janet Ryan and Christopher De La Cerda and an email De La Cerda sent to The Bee’s education reporter, Mackenzie Mays, in recent days.

Ryan and De La Cerda, as do the board majority, oppose an independent investigation into the lease-leaseback process used to build Gaston. Their reasoning is, “Because it is up to the Supreme Court to provide clarity on lease-leaseback, any investigation would be most unwise while this is open and pending in the courts.”

While it’s true that the 5th District Court of Appeal deemed Fresno Unified’s use of lease-leaseback illegal specific to Gaston’s construction, court documents also publicly revealed that Harris Construction was hired to advise the district on all aspects of the school’s construction before it was hired to build the school.

Thus, the district never had an independent appraisal of how much the school should cost. Simply put, the fox was guarding the hen house. That practice is never good for taxpayers.

In his email, De La Cerda said, “The district finally built a state-of-the-art middle school for a part of our community that lacked one for more than 30 years. The positive impact that it has had on the children, their families and the community is just beginning to be realized. For that, I would suggest that the ongoing criticism has been worth it.”

De La Cerda’s comments are straight out of Public Relations 101 on how to distract the public from the real issues.

No one has suggested that Gaston wasn’t needed; it is vital to southwest Fresno’s future. Neither has anyone suggested that Gaston wasn’t long overdue. Indeed, the Editorial Board began advocating for its construction in 2008.

De La Cerda overlooks the obvious: The goal should be to build needed facilities without wasting taxpayer dollars or favoring contractors who donate to trustee election campaigns and bond measures (as Harris Construction has done) over contractors who don’t.

We repeat our call for the board to hire an independent investigator to get to the bottom of how this contract was awarded.

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Editorial: Public has right to know truth about Gaston contract."