Lemmond Missing Expo?

Update: There were no spottings of Jerry Lemmond at the Expo, one of the largest gatherings of the campaign season.

Jerry Lemmond Skipping Meet The Candidates Session

The En­richment Center’s Sixth Annual Boomer, Senior and Caregiver Expo opens Thursday at the Dennis Wicker Center. With more than 2,500 people expected to attend, Jerry Lemmond failed to sign up for a special session offered to candidates to meet with interested attendees and take their questions. Lemmond, who has the reputation of showing up anywhere 3 or more people gather in Lee County, may plan to be on the grounds, but he apparently did not want to take unmoderated questions in an informal session with voters. Commission candidates were offered 30 minute periods to sit down in a special section of the lobby to answer questions from attendees. According to event organizers, Lemmond did not respond. Since Robert Reives will be off drawing his public salary from the state somewhere in Raleigh, Lemmond would not be able to read the facial cues that Reives uses to tell Lemmond the position he is supposed to take on issues as was demonstrated at the last commissioners meeting. A number of people had especially planned questions for him. Here is the schedule for commission candidates: Harry Undy 10:00; Amy Dalrymple 10:30; Herb Hincks 11:00; Richard Hayes 11:30; Larry "Doc" Odom. 1:00. Candidates for other offices are scheduled at other times. Lemmond is not believed to be out of town drawing his $150 per diem at one of the many conferences at which he so dutifully represents our county. He may unavoidably be at a funeral for his wife's first cousin's next door neighbor's brother-in-law's husband. Of course he could be out driving around the county on his in-county travel allowance "checking rain damage." With the number of attendees expected he might try to get lost in the crowd--any thing but face the voters in a question answer session.

Just A Few Sea Shells

Editor Rambling After Beach Trip

Editors Note: Last week was spent at the beach. The posts were scheduled automatically to keep things active. No computer access for a week! Coming home and catching up I have found some items that need some verification. I have also picked up some odds and ends of interest--kind of like picking up shells on the beach.

What A Difference A Day Makes

The first day of school is a day that one can always expect traffic jams, but the one created with the dual opening of Southern Lee High School and SanLee Middle School was apparently Raleigh-style grid lock. After having a chance to observe traffic patterns, Lee County Schools staff made some changes in the traffic pattern and Tuesday traffic moved as well as anyone can expect until NC DOT realizes the need for a stop light at Hickory House Road.

Commissioner's Meeting

So Jerry Lemmond voted both ways again. He changed his vote after getting a nasty look from Robert Reives. That happened back in July, too (See Previous Post). It doesn't matter much because it was a procedural vote to decide not to decide whether or not to allow attorneys to smoke in a back room in the courthouse. Ray Martin, the "expert" the commissioner's hired because they don't know what to do with the political mess they created over Lee County High School, is now going out to the court house to look the smoking situation over. This seems to be the commissioners new way of doing nothing productive while looking like they care.

Welcome To The Crumpton's

County Manager John Crumpton has finally been able to get his family relocated here to Lee County. With the housing market in the toilet selling his home, it was necessary for the board to extend his relocation allowance to accommodate his needs. Word is that his daughter is on the tennis team at Lee Senior High School. Since he chose to live in that attendance district, does he know something we don't?

Letter Wrong About Board of Education Votes

A recent letter to the editor published in the Herald suggested that the Board of Education had split into two blocks with most votes 4-2. That, it turns out, is not true. The Board voted 4-2 to elect Bill Tatum chair and Frank Thompson at its first meeting. Since then, every other vote has been a unanimous vote of 7-0.

Note: If you missed the Uncommon Sense Column in the Herald last week, you can read it by clicking here.

LCHS Report : Part 3 Misrepresenting the Obvious

Hard Work By Team "Packaged" For Effect While the entire document is 49 pages, the report itself is only 5. There is a two page letter from the project czar, Raymond Martin, the $2000 a week consultant, a title page, the 5 pages of the report, and 48 pages of memorandum (mostly emails) from the members of the team to bulk it up so it looks like a big report. (to see a list of the team click here). No doubt the members of the team did a conscientious job of inspecting the campus and writing emails to Martin. These memorandums and emails reflect people who are conscientious and professional. It is Martin's failures that make the report of little use except as the political document it was intended to be. No where is there a single cost estimate. Back to the lack of scope. One failure was to compare the findings with those of the Hite Plan for Renovation to see what could be learned from the comparison. Those already identified could and should have been marked. But, without a well thought out scope document, these kind of ideas that could have greatly increased the value of the report aren't considered. You will recall that what was a" safety and health study" is now called a "safety and security study." As noted in the first of this series, there was no written scope and without one, the findings can get out of whack. The Hite study dealt with "security" from the standpoint of physical control of the campus--how to avoid a "Combine" here. It is not clear why the name of the study was changed, but its scope has nothing to do with that kind of security. The inspection team included no one with that expertise. So if you are looking for identification of those needs, you will not find them. As for Martin's report, he reviewed the material and classified the findings into five categories:

• Emergencies
• Updates to Current Codes
• Maintenance
• Housekeeping
• Miscellaneous

The biggest items in this entire report are buried at the back in the miscellaneous section. It is suggested that no less than a site engineer, an environmental consultant, an architectural consultant, mechanical engineer, and lighting consultant be retained to look at various issues. Duh, that is what taxpayers money has already paid for in the Hite Report. Why won't the commissioners use it? I thought Mr. Martin had the expertise to examine these matters. When you start reading a report on conditions at a school, and you find references to a supreme court definition of emergencies, it is kind of a clue of the b-s that is to follow throughout the report. I think we all intuitively know with what an emergency is but the author wanted as dramatic a report as possible. The report calls for an integrated fire alarm system and fire suppression systems. It notes that contracts have been let for the fire suppression system. Updates to Current Codes refers to items that met the building codes when built, but the old buildings do not meet the all the requirements they would have to meet if the were rebuilt today. Most of these would were identified and correction provided for in the Hite report for the renovations. Few if any will come as surprise to the Board of Education. However, since the commissioners never would agree to a thorough briefing on The Hite Report, they may come as a surprise to them. This is why the unwillingness and stone-walling by the commissioners on the Hite Report was a major mistake. This is the part of the report that undoubted most parents and other speakers had reference to when speaking of health and safety problems. Maintenance is a suggest that certain items inter alia be considered for regular check lists. inter alia? inter alia? What on earth is inter alia? It is one of those show-off words. It simply means "other things". Why use inter alia instead of "and other things." It is one of those b-s words designed to let us know how smart the writer it. In the case of suggesting that the schools have certain things like checking light bulbs behind exit signs on a regular check list, it also helps to make it sound like a big deal. There is no evidence that the schools don't have a check list. A simple email would have found out. But no, we have got inter alia? The Housekeeping section is much like the maintenance section--clear the gutters, change air filters, etc. Why this isn't" inter alia?", too, I am not sure. Read this recommendation regarding the water problem with my comments: reportedly-with all the rainstorms he never saw the problem.) floods ankle deep during and immediately after heavy rains. It should (should--does that mean yes it will or maybe it will. It sounds like a highly qualified statement) be possible to raise the surface of this walkway 6” or 7”+. Existing surface should be demolished and substrate built up with crushed stone and 4” reinforced concrete topping. Leaks in existing cover should be repaired. When asked where the water would go, Martin replied "into the grass?" Certainly not a very precise answer. Of course, he does recommend bringing in a civil engineer to look at the real problem.

Part 2. LCHS Report: Project Management Failure

From The Seat Of His Pants Despite his constantly citing 30 years as a construction manager, Ray Martin could not provide any evidence of the most basic of project management techniques. His attitude was "I am so smart" that I don't need them. First he said the project never had a written scope. Perhaps that why the name went from "Safety/Security" from the original "Safety/Health." He finally admitted "I was just supposed to look around and see what was wrong." Having a clearly defined, written scope is project management 101. For example, while the report makes some recommendations it provides no cost or time estimates for the problems that it found. He could not produce a planned task list from which work was done other than to refer to memos sent back to him by members of the inspection team. He kept no record of hours worked by team members--some of which were public employees. As a result there is no way to determine, other than his $2000 a week salary, what the true cost of the project was to the tax payers. There were no common checklists, no standard ratings of how serious a particular problem might be by the person who identified it, or minutes of team meetings. While the various members of the team no doubt did what they thought were their responsibilities, these responsibilities were never documented. Martin's style was to try to bully his way past the answers by questioning the knowledge of the interviewer. Martin saw no value in providing the Board of Education with a draft of his report so that he would at least have an up-to-date status of what was planned or if certain work had been done. Both state and federal audits of the programs I have managed in state government have always wanted to have management comments before making a report public. Martin kept failing back to all his experience in the past and his supposedly superior knowledge, but it took less than 10 minutes to see that this project was run by the seat of his pants. In the report, he ends up recommending bringing in a professional to test for fungus and a civil engineer to deal with the water problems. In other words, when it comes down to the bottom line, he was not qualified to perform these functions and the most critical issues were not resolved. Most of the recommendations were made by members of the team with little evidence of independent contribution by Martin. Worst of all, there were no proposed time schedule for or cost estimates on the recommendations made in the report. As he said "I was just supposed to look around and see what was wrong." In Part 3, tomorrow, a look at the recommendations.

Part 1. LCHS Report: The Political Agenda

Commissioners Try To Rebound From Lee County Senior High Debacle

Despite the pleas of parents, teachers, students, and supporters of the sales tax referendum, the commissioners turned a deaf ear to express an intent to use a portion of the proceeds of the sales tax revenue to fund the renovation plans for Lee County Senior High School. In fact, on orders from Commissioner Robert Reives, it was stripped out of a resolution on the use of the funds at the last minute. A review of entries of the e-Lee Dispatch provides documentation of weeks and weeks of the commissioners refusal to deal with the Lee County Senior High School issue. One post deals with Jerry Lemmond's complete silence on the issue. The commissioners, it seemed, thought the public would "trust them." As we shall see in a future posts, the commissioners had a plan to spend the money on a lot of other things besides education. After the defeat of the sales tax and chairman Bob Brown, Commissioners Lemmond and Paschal were panicking. The county manager made calls to several community leaders to test the waters for perhaps a second run at the tax in November. Lemmond and Paschal, however, were afraid the referendum would hurt more than help their chances. Commissioners hoped that the strong leadership of the Board of Education by Bill Tatum would come to an end in the election, but Tatum won and stayed in the chairman's seat despite efforts by their surrogates. Reportedly Reives and Kelly came up with a public relations approach to defuse the problem--a safety and health study to show that the commissioners did listen and did care about Lee County High School after all. Never mind that most of these issues were already addressed in the Hite report they had consistently ignored. And perhaps they could embarrass and discredit the school board because of the conditions found at the school. Then they rushed to implement their plan--that rush was there first mistake. They were interested in getting a document out as soon as possible that would be critical of the school, not an in-depth study. They picked a bully with a loud voice rather than a professional as project management--one not certified in project management, civil engineering, or health. No one apparently considered going to the Hite report for which the school board had already paid for had much of this information. No scope was written for the product. In the end it recommends hiring 4 kinds of experts to look at the site. The report had has no cost estimates. The shoddy manner in which the project was managed will the subject of Part 2 tomorrow. When voters find out what they have gotten for their money they will not be happy. Click here to download pdf file. You can get a copy of the report by emailing the Clerk to the Board "Gaynell Lee" . Her address is glee@leecountync.gov It is public information and should be sent in pdf form by email.

Report on Lee County High School Due Today

Will Report Prove To Be Embarrassing For Board? Editors Note: The commissioners now have the report on health and safety they paid Ray Martin $2000 a week and asked hundreds of hours from public employees will be released tomorrow. Hint: When asked for how he checked for mold, the project manager said he looked for it. Guess: How many more consultants did he recommend be hired? Wild Guess: What much will fixing repairs cost and how long will they take? The commissioners are going to be faced with to a dilemma --act pleased, treat the report as a the fulfillment of a great idea, and use it for making some momentous decision or realize that because they don't know what they have doing, they have placed more nails in coffin of those members facing reelection. To avoid the latter, they will have to act very disgruntled, ask a lot of hard questions, and Jerry Lemmond and Ed Paschal will have to make some quick overtures to end their stonewalling on the Hite Report. This is a big call for Robert Reives to make. For each of the next three days, there will be a series of posts that provide the analysis and insight about this report that will provide insight and information that you will not get any where else. Stay tuned. This is guaranteed to be worth it.

GOP LATE, DEMOCRATS ILLEGAL $

Democrats Have Their Turn Let's see. The Lee County Democrat Party filed its second quarter report on time. It was not a hard report to complete. It shows no contributions and $3.23 in expenditures. The Republicans turned their homework in late and the Democrats took an illegal contribution from an elected official. For their administrative errors, the Republicans will have spent a few days in political purgatory, most likely be fined, and gotten a wave of bad press. If anyone ought to know every nook and cranny of how to spend money politically, Jamie Kelly should. The "good ol' days" when his grandfather could just hand out the cash are supposedly gone. There are volumes of laws now. So Jamie's firm gets its money back and gets to keep the meals he thought he was buying. It doesn't sound quite equitable, but its the law. In the end, none of this will have much impact on the elections. In both parties most of the money is collected and spent by the campaigns of the individual candidates. By November voters will be deciding between candidates. It is reported that 1% of the voters provide 90% of the political contributions. Perhaps more of us should assume the financial responsibility of living in a democracy.