CONCORD — The Mt. Diablo Unified College District is dismissing nearly all of an oversight committee appointed to oversee the spending of its $150 million taxpayer-funded development bond program, whilst a brand new grand jury report criticizes officers for failing to make sure the panel is really unbiased — undermining California legislation.
Until the district abruptly pivots throughout Wednesday’s board assembly, commissioners say the eight-member Measure J oversight physique will successfully be defunct, jeopardizing reimbursement of a controversial contract with Schneider Electrical for an air-conditioning modernization challenge fee members had criticized for years.
District officers disregarded these considerations, saying that a lot of the founding volunteers on the Measure J Residents’ Bond Oversight Committee had accomplished three full, two-year phrases, which is the utmost service allowed underneath its bylaws. The six commissioners being dismissed have served since 2019.
Not everybody being ousted goes quietly, together with one commissioner who stated his prediction of retaliatory dismissals is changing into a actuality.
Gina Haynes, a founding member of the oversight fee and its present chair, stated Koslow and different district officers have instructed her to “bury this thing,” as a result of their ongoing scrutiny of Measure J will negatively influence the varsity district’s potential to hunt voter approval for one more bond.
“I don’t think we should let things go,” Haynes stated on the telephone Friday. “It doesn’t sit well with me, because I want to do the right thing, not bury it.”
Haynes offered Koslow and Adrian Vargas, the district’s chief enterprise officer, data of her re-appointment in 2022, which aimed to stagger membership. By Tuesday, she stated she’s acquired the identical reply about guidelines that successfully bind the district’s choice.
However Haynes stated previous bond oversight committees for the district have stored commissioners on the roster for years and even a long time — a response to the problem the physique has had discovering volunteers.
“Even the Board of Education, they’re not familiar with all the past history — it takes people to know and pass that institutional knowledge on,” Haynes stated. “If we’ve got people lined up to do this job, certainly I would step down after my term and let somebody else jump in, but we’ve struggled to keep membership up. Mt. Diablo has struggled with transparency, and this is just another way to silence people.”
At-Massive Group member chairperson Gina Haynes attends the Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee assembly held on the Mt. Diablo Unified College District workplace in Harmony, Calif., on Thursday, Could 16, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Space Information Group)
Superintendent Adam Clark was fast to defend his district in an interview Tuesday afternoon, saying employees are merely following the foundations outlined the bylaws for the Measure J oversight fee, which had been established throughout its first assembly in August of 2019.
He stated the oversight fee had raised respectable considerations with the Schneider Electrical contract, however that as these points have been addressed, their continued scrutiny is counter-productive and the criticism has “taken a lot away from the purpose of the work.” Welcoming “fresh eyes” on the incoming roster, Clark stated purposes for brand new commissioners will probably be accepted within the coming months — seemingly after the district goes darkish in July and Schneider’s reps shut the challenge out over summer season break.
A Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury report launched Tuesday morning discovered that the volunteer fee tasked with overseeing spending of the district’s Measure J cash is insufficiently unbiased.
“The current CBOC is not independent as its bylaws are written and controlled by MDUSD. These bylaws give MDUSD the authority to control who is appointed as a member of the CBOC,” the jury stated in its report, which was filed Could 30 and accredited by the foreperson on June 4 – roughly 48 hours earlier than the district’s high upkeep and authorized officers despatched out notices that the board would quickly have solely two members.
Jim Walsh, a founding commissioner, has for months criticized the district’s failure to offer monetary and authorized assets the fee had requested to help its investigation – saying the oversight physique had been diminished to “an afterthought committee” with none precise energy to meet their authorized duties.
Senior Residents’ Group member Jim Walsh attends the Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee assembly held on the Mt. Diablo Unified College District workplace in Harmony, Calif., on Thursday, Could 16, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Space Information Group)
In October, he stated he was involved that the board could retaliate and take away oversight officers who voiced their opposition, which motivated him to boost the potential of a recall effort towards the varsity district’s trustees.
The district’s board will acknowledge the fee’s six outgoing members at a gathering Wednesday for his or her assist in “making certain transparency, fiscal accountability, and neighborhood belief within the District’s bond program.
The purge leaves solely two members remaining on the CBOC: Justin Pickering, who was appointed in December of 2022 to symbolize mother and father and guardians energetic within the PTO, and Erin Adrian, a guardian/guardian of a pupil enrolled at MDUSD who was appointed in June 2024.
Reflecting on his almost six years volunteering to supervise spending of Measure J, Walsh stated he believes district officers have been boastful of their dealing with of the controversy across the Schneider Electrical contract.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s about money, because they have the opportunity here to reclaim a large amount of this contract (with Schneider Electric),” Walsh stated. “I think it’s that they don’t want the public to know about it. … They’re unwilling to look at the facts and reality that these people put this over on them, and they want to cover it up.”
Initially Revealed: June 11, 2025 at 4:20 AM PDT
