Retired Auditor Charges Palm Beach County School District Deceived Taxpayers And Equates Relocating Atlantic High School With Playing Taxpayers For A 'Sucker' Field PR Newswire -- May 23, 2002 DELRAY BEACH, Fla., May 23 /PRNewswire/ -- A retired U.S. Navy officer who was an auditor for various governmental agencies said today she has evidence of deception surrounding the controversial plan to relocate Atlantic High School. Deborah Bennett, who is a resident here, said she has uncovered an email that shows while Palm Beach County School District was saying publicly it wasn't shopping for school property in Delray Beach last November, it had been working for months quietly behind the scenes with the City on just such a plan. "Why this deception?" asks Bennett, a retired naval officer and mother of an Atlantic High School student. The one-time auditor for NATO and the State of Nebraska also charges that the now well-publicized plan to relocate Atlantic High School makes no financial sense. "It will probably cost Palm Beach County taxpayers millions of dollars in unnecessary expenditures. Bennett said the email she uncovered was sent from a city representative last May requesting time frames for the "Tate Property acquisition." The Tate property is the initial 20-acre parcel of the 43-acre relocation site that the city is putting together for the school district. In the email, the city representative stated to a high ranking school district official that "It may be possible for the City to 'tie-up' the 40 acres (between Military Trail and Barwick Road) for several months and hold it for you, if you feel the Tate deal may not go through." A handwritten note at the bottom of the email said: "Barry, how is it looking for the Tate property - Delray?" It was signed Bill. "Barry" is School District Real Estate Services Director Barry Present and Bill is Bill Malone, chief operating officer for the school district, she said. As a "curious footnote on the Tate property deal," Bennett asks why didn't they obtain an option to buy on the Tate Property when they first considered it, as it sold for $3.5 million several months after that time and the city wound up paying $6.4 million for it? When she asked city commissioners last night about it, they replied they were not looking at the property even as late as last July. From this, she concluded "either they didn't know what the city was doing or they were not telling the truth. It's just too difficult to believe they didn't know when Commissioner Jon Levinson seems to have been very 'hands-on' with this issue." The plan Bennett criticizes calls for relocating Atlantic High School from its present site, at one of the highest elevations in the county, to one that was once partially wetlands and close to what she considers a dangerous intersection near Atlantic and Congress in Delray. The plan also calls for selling part of the present site to Delray for soccer fields. "They're moving the high school from an area where it is wanted by the surrounding residents to an area where it is unwanted with the result that children who will have to walk to the new school past entrance and exit ramps of I95, plus cross a dangerous intersection at Atlantic and Congress. Why?" Bennett said she can't understand why anyone would support such a plan. "Are they looking at the same numbers I'm looking at? It's almost as if some hidden interests stand to gain," she said. "Otherwise it makes no sense whatever." She said that after studying the plans in great detail, "it's almost as if we are getting sucker fields, instead of soccer fields from such an unnecessary and ill-advised reshuffling of property at prices that defy rationality." Bennett also criticized the relocation plan in that it forces displacement of over 35 families from their homes. "There's no question that Atlantic High School needs to be rebuilt," she said, "but the most logical and economical solution would be to rebuild the school at its present location." If original plans for rebuilding had been followed, she said the children would be walking into new school buildings by August 2004. "The last plans I saw said 2005. But since the latest agreement allows for conveyance of the land to be extended, it could be later than that before our children get a new school." Bennett also points to peculiar specifics of the plan that she maintains do not add up. For example, the School Board is paying the city of Delray for the new site, an amount based on the value of the present site, plus an estimated construction savings, plus another amount to be determined. The problem is that the present site is valued at $225,000 an acre for bare land only and in that appraisal, the Tate Property was used as a comparable at $178,000 an acre. The added "Construction Savings" came from a study that was done in November, but even the company responsible for the study called the figures "estimates for comparison purposes only," she said. "In reviewing the study, without even going into the accuracy of their numbers, I find errors totaling between $1.1 million and $6.5 million. I estimate that overall it will cost taxpayers at least an additional $10 million to move the school, instead of rebuilding on the current site and purchasing another middle school site." Bennett questions why the school district signed a blank purchase contract tucked inside the interlocal agreement. "Could it be because they don't know how much this is going to cost?" The school district has always stated that it would cost no more to move the high school and land bank acreage for a middle school on the present site than to rebuild the school on its present site and purchase a middle school site. Mrs. Bennett challenges this position based on her study of the facts. Money that was intended for education facilities will wind up on soccer fields for Delray Beach. "It's not that I'm against the sport or having nice facilities where children can play soccer, but not at the expense of the district's education budget." Proponents of the relocation plan certainly seem anxious to be getting Atlantic High School off of its present site, she said, referring to published reports that the city paid 35 percent over market value, plus other costs for the 55 acres for a property known as the Arvida site, between Military Trail and Barrick Road. It appears the city optioned the Arvida site as a back up, if the Tate site had not gone through, but wound up purchasing it anyway. "Now the city is trying to figure out what to do with that site." Also, the initial interest in the Arvida site belies the city's contention that it needed a central location for the new school, since the Arvida site was so far west it would have had to have been annexed to be in the city limits, she said. The whole subject of finding a suitable central location also seems hollow, she added, in that the school district does not draw school boundaries in accordance with municipal boundaries. Another argument that relocation proponents give is that it would support a feeder system, but this is bogus too, she said. Delray says it wants a feeder system where children go to school together from kindergarten through twelfth grade. But Superintendent of Schools, Art Johnson has publicity stated the district was dramatically moving away from the feeder school system. Bennett also noted Mayor Schmidt's statement in January that the county needed a new middle school in Delray by 2006; however, the current 5-year plan doesn't support this, she said. "The middle school that they touted as much needed is not guaranteed in the agreement. In a letter, City Manager of Delray David Harden even says, "If it turns out that the existing Atlantic site is not needed for a middle school in a few years, then the school district could sell the remaining 20 acres of the site." Contact: Toni Somma of The TransMedia Group 561-750-9800, ext. 10. TSomma@transmediagroup.com