Wasted taxpayer money

WESLACO — The Weslaco schools superintendent said he takes responsibly for a mix-up his critics believe resulted in more than $77,000 in wasted taxpayer money.

The school district paid two different architects to each design plans for a school cafeteria renovation, and at least one school board member believes the move is more than an accident.

The district paid a McAllen architectural firm more than $77,000 last year for renovation plans to the cafeteria at Roosevelt Elementary - only to decide that the school needed a new cafeteria altogether.

But after making that decision, the district decided to pursue a renovation after all - and hired architect Rudy Gomez to design a second set of plans. The switch was authorized by the district's school board.

Hector Garcia, the original architect on the project, said in a memo to school board member Raymond Givilancz that he believes some board members were "clueless that my firm was paid $80,000 to shelve the drawings."

Earlier this month, Givilancz expressed his frustration to the school board and district staff at a board meeting.

"It's wasted taxpayer money," he said in an interview. "There's nothing we can do about it anymore."

District Superintendent Richard Rivera said there was no malicious intent behind the deal and disputed the allegation that taxpayer money was wasted.

Based on the new plans, the renovation will cost $1 million, Rivera said. The price tag based on the original designs was an estimated $1.3 million.

But he asserts neither he nor the school board members knew Garcia would have to be paid for his designs when they switched the project over to Gomez.

Rivera said district staff should have made him aware the district would have to pay Garcia's firm after making the switch to Gomez. But the school system's top executive said he takes ultimate responsibility for not being aware of that consequence and conceded he should have asked questions.

"The superintendent is supposed to know everything, but there's no superintendent anywhere who knows everything," Rivera said.
Robert Sepulveda, the school board president, suggested the double payment was primarily due to a lack of communication.
But Givilancz said he believes the district's actions were no mistake. He said Rivera "basically wanted to give (Gomez) the project."

In Garcia's memo to Givilancz, the architect states that Andres Sanchez, the district's chief executive director of business operations, told Garcia last year that "he probably would lose the project," just two weeks before the board voted to take it away from him.

At the board meeting earlier this month, Sanchez denied saying that. He declined to comment for this story.

Gomez had been working as the "watchdog architect" on the cafeteria project, tasked with ensuring costs remained reasonable, before the board awarded him the project outright.

Rivera said Gomez was a good candidate for the project, since he originally designed the cafeteria in the 1980s.