The Board's love affair with Cordogan Clark blows my mind. If I had a vendor which kept critical information from me about a project the size of the 5th Ward School, fired would not be the right word for how quickly they would be gone, and yet - they are still collecting checks and running the show.
The Board's love affair with Cordogan Clark blows my mind. If I had a vendor which kept critical information from me about a project the size of the 5th Ward School, fired would not be the right word for how quickly they would be gone, and yet - they are still collecting checks and running the show.
After I wrote my first letter to the editor on D65 (https://evanstonroundtable.com/2022/03/07/letter-to-editor-fifth-ward-school-bessie-rhodes-plan/), I got a Zoom call with Dr. Horton and Dr. Obafemi and one of the questions I asked was how they came up with the budget and was told that the number came from Cordogan Clark - that there were industry standards for how many square feet you needed per student and how much a building should cost per square foot.
As we now know, Cordogan Clark was never able to design a building that could be built for $40 million, yet never shared that info with the Board until this past October.
They also never shared with the Board that there could be factors which could jack the cost of construction costs up, such poor soil conditions. No one checked and that factor was never taken into account by the Board in going ahead with the lease certificate transaction. And surprise - the soil conditions turned out to be suboptimal and that factor that has added something on the order of $6 million to construction costs.
Even after Cordogan Clark knew that there was no way to build the new building with the funds from the lease certificates, they kept quiet when Dr. Horton continued to tell lies about the cost of the building.
And yet, the Board treats them as trusted advisers and pays them huge amounts of money. Mind-blowing.
That’s because they are literally terrible people who are making devastating decisions that will impact real lives negatively. They made grave mistakes and completely abdicated their fiduciary responsibility and then couldn’t be arsed to ever once apologize for their role in this mess! They are terrible people. End of. Good people make mistakes. But they apologize and try to make amends. These people dig in and insist they are right even when the evidence proves otherwise. They suck. Hopefully new candidates come forth. This ship needs a course correction.
The Board's love affair with Cordogan Clark blows my mind. If I had a vendor which kept critical information from me about a project the size of the 5th Ward School, fired would not be the right word for how quickly they would be gone, and yet - they are still collecting checks and running the show.
After I wrote my first letter to the editor on D65 (https://evanstonroundtable.com/2022/03/07/letter-to-editor-fifth-ward-school-bessie-rhodes-plan/), I got a Zoom call with Dr. Horton and Dr. Obafemi and one of the questions I asked was how they came up with the budget and was told that the number came from Cordogan Clark - that there were industry standards for how many square feet you needed per student and how much a building should cost per square foot.
As we now know, Cordogan Clark was never able to design a building that could be built for $40 million, yet never shared that info with the Board until this past October.
They also never shared with the Board that there could be factors which could jack the cost of construction costs up, such poor soil conditions. No one checked and that factor was never taken into account by the Board in going ahead with the lease certificate transaction. And surprise - the soil conditions turned out to be suboptimal and that factor that has added something on the order of $6 million to construction costs.
Even after Cordogan Clark knew that there was no way to build the new building with the funds from the lease certificates, they kept quiet when Dr. Horton continued to tell lies about the cost of the building.
And yet, the Board treats them as trusted advisers and pays them huge amounts of money. Mind-blowing.
That’s because they are literally terrible people who are making devastating decisions that will impact real lives negatively. They made grave mistakes and completely abdicated their fiduciary responsibility and then couldn’t be arsed to ever once apologize for their role in this mess! They are terrible people. End of. Good people make mistakes. But they apologize and try to make amends. These people dig in and insist they are right even when the evidence proves otherwise. They suck. Hopefully new candidates come forth. This ship needs a course correction.