Continued Ervin Legal Files:

New Construction aspect of the Operations Division
Since I’ve become General Director of Operations and besides that, Director of Maintenance, I’ve been made aware of many problems associated with new construction projects. I have personally looked at many of these and listened to maintenance employees, and situations have been discussed in staff I’ve never made an accusation of anyone stealing from the district but I do have great concerns about some of the conversations I’ve listened to and the end products that we’re receiving. I think that since I’ve been in this position that I have seen some progress, however, I still have great concerns and I’d like to cover each of those:

I would like to start with the Land purchases - I’ve discovered that many of our schools are built on trash dumps, some in areas of high concentration of phosphate and we have to monitor the gasses that are being released from these. I’ve heard Dr. Hamilton state at least ten times that Mr. Kluso is correct in many of his accusations that he has made regarding building and land purchases. Durant High School comes to mind, in particular, where our test by state standards has failed and we have to have a local environmental engineer review. We did get them passed again this past year. Another concern with our purchases of property is that we seem to continue to buy land that is extremely wet.

Then we sit in staff and discuss how we might appropriately locate the building on the property. After the building is built we consistently experienced standing water and water that seeps into the building and gets floors wet and creates air quality problems. I have been a part of discussions in the Operations Division Staff meetings, as recently as approximately one year ago where we first purchased a piece of property. I am not sure exactly which one it was. From the conversation, it could have been possibly new Tampa area where we were trying to determine after we purchased it if it was buildable because of the wet lands. A plan was made to have the land evaluted during the driest time so we could use it.

There was concern expressed about the school board being aware of the price we had paid and the partial property we had really gotten. This continues to be a concern, I understand that it is difficult to find property to build schools on, but if we’re going to build schools on property that’s going to create possible air quality or health, life, safety issues lbr our students we need to take a close look at this.

The next issue I’d like to address, which is also Health, Life, Safety issues, is the AC and the water penetration of our buildings, whether it be through the roofs or through the walls.

Shortly after entering my position as Director of Maintenance, I was made aware of a number of Air Quality problems that existed throughout our school system- A couple of examples of these are Gaither and Bloomingdale High Schools. The original AC was put in those two schools prior to me being in the position I’m in today and actually the second AC system was placed in those schools prior to me being here.

However, I was told that the second installation cost the district approximately 12 million dollars and we still had serious Air Quality issues in both schools and we were hiring two full-time outside consultants to be there at the site to try to monitor the air quality. Since that time it has been a continual problem. We’ve had to do extensive, additional work at both sites as recently as early October. I was still getting complaints of AQ problemsI
would go to the designated area. Normally, before they got to the designated school that they were being paid to install the phones, they would go by a drug dealer and purchase marijuana, cocaine, and other items. The gentleman, I believe, was telling the truth. He was very, very scared and needed help getting out. I reported all this information to my superiors and to security. The gentleman was fired that gave me the information.

On October 18, 2000,1 met with Oscar Westerfield, Steve Rough and his partner, Fred. I don’t know Fred’s last name. Mr. Westerfield is a former FBI agent who was hired by the school system. They all felt that ample evidence had been presented to bring about prosecutions in both investigations.

Doug Erwin, General Director of Operations
Gnenfleet CE