WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE CHAPARRAL MIDDLE SCHOOL PROJECT – PART 2

This is the continuation of the assessment sent to Judy Rabon, President of the Alamogordo School Board, dated September 12, 2023.

In chronological order:

2020

APS Facilities Committee Publishes 5-Year Plan – $36M CMS Construction (estimated) on existing Site Design Team [Perry?, et al.] reimagined(?) the build site location from the existing site to Hang Gliders Park.

2021

Hospital Risk Notice – Two (2) Plus Years to Resolve

Rabon received risk notice information regarding the Hang Gliders Park property, expressed by the hospital board president.

Rabon emailed the notice information to Tagle

• Build Location Impacts Ambulance Travel {Location is unacceptable}

• The hospital wants to purchase property to preclude site development

• APS could not afford site construction because of all the burdens imposed by floodplain requirements

Foreseeable Economic Challenges to Replace Historical Floodplain Design and Elevate Grade

1) All adjacent property owners are required to approve an easement for floodplain redesign.

2) Engineering approval for the redesign of the existing water flow control

3) Engineering, hospital, and other property owners’ approval for new diversion berms and canals on their property

4) The exorbitant cost of fill required to raise site level, etc.

5) Full coordination & approval by OSHA, FEMA, ARCE (Army Core of Engineers)

6) Hospital [and all other property owners] unlikely to waive new risks or approve easements

[See email, Ryan Parks Cc. Colleen Tagle, 6/23/2022, in your possession]

2022

June 20, 2022, email constructed by Moore, Tagle Burks To PSFA, Judy Rabon, et al., what appears to be another imagineered? version for team information recording, a seemingly typical APS technique.

Review required?

Work Product and comments of email prior to sending

Burks: “Excellent Ken. It makes sense why you are the Superintendent! . . . stick with our original numbers . . . we will likely not accept all of the changes he is advocating.”

Tagle: “I love it! Very restrained tone and quite professional.”

Email sent June 20, 2022at 12:55 PM to The Public School Facility Authority (PSFA) – Indirect Oversite of Contract and Construction

No copy for review.

PSFA Response, sent to APS June 23, 2022. Worthy of exhaustive review.?

“I am concerned that you have not paid attention to what I wrote on June 15 or what was stated in the meeting held on June 13.”

“You [APS] stated in your letter . . . per the direction of Mr. Abbey . . . move the project to the construction Design phase. This was not Mr. Abbey’s direction.”

“Again, there are a variety of ill-informed statements in this paragraph.”

“PSFA would like to see from the design professionals what taking these AA items out would actually come out to and not just based on your assessment.”

“You have misinterpreted most of that conversation you are referencing.”

“A few points on this paragraph” about the MACC. “You [APS] have misinterpreted most of that conversation you are referring.” “The problem with this project is that the budget was never adhered to. “

“The bigger issue is that this project has had almost no PSFA involvement per your district’s directionMs. Tagle made this very clear with statements she has made several times to our agency.”

“The comments … continue to push the narrative that APS is building a “Luxury” school and that the cost is “baked in” to the design.” You again are confusing the conversation with the language you are using . . . “

“APS also hired a design team that has limited, if any, PSFA project experience and very limited public K-12 school design experience. This is a concern for our agency.”

In the continued APS narrative regarding the baked-in costs and demolition, PSFA states: “Again, you have misrepresented our agency’s position with this statement.” and “The second sentence in this statement is also false.”

“To state that we just need to see what the bids come in at is at best a gamble.”

“I would push back on your past statements that PSFA is responsible for holding this project up. It is your team that has stalled this project by deciding to leave PSFA out of the design process. Because of this decision, APS did the project a disservice and has brought us to ask the design team to pause progress.

“We are not making these decisions unilaterally. They are based on precedent, statute, and direction from the PSCOC.”

[See email, Ryan Parks Cc Colleen Tagle, 6/23/2022, in your possession]

Rebuttals of this nature to interagency communications generally reflect grave project management issues arising within implementation teams. In addition, it is reasonably believed that during high inflation, excluding PSFA construction oversite resulted in a program delay and cascading cost increases.

2023

APS Press Release – Board Announces New Information Results in CMS Reloca8on

Tagle Discussion: In-person meeting, Tuesday, August 29, 2023

1) New Schedule impact information is in reference to excessive schedule impacts that would result from coordination required between APS, OSHA, FEMA, Army Core of Engineers, etc.

2) APS holds the funds to mitigate construction work for known floodplain impacts. Not asked or answered was whether the totality of the floodplain work needed was captured in the response. Had a full construction impact assessment been completed?

Read Part 1 – WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE CHAPARRAL MIDDLE SCHOOL PROJECT – PART 1 – Alamogordo Sentinel

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