A wrongful termination lawsuit, filed by a former employee of the Española School District, exposes potentially unethical behavior by former and current administrators and Board members.
In a complaint filed in October 2013, former facilities manager Mark Chavez claimed Española Board members and administrators have a history of extending job offers, work contracts and other favors to friends and political allies.
The complaint alleges this pattern includes a contract Board members awarded to SMPC Architects, a construction design firm based out of Albuquerque, to design the Fairview Elementary renovation.
The suit states Board members wanted to hire SMPC because of their association with John Padilla. Padilla was an employee at the firm and would allegedly take them to play golf and on various other outings.
“There was always that rumor,” former Española superintendent Art Blea said during an Oct. 14 interview. “There was never any evidence, but that was the word on the street.”
Board Vice President Ralph Medina denies that claim and said he is not tied to anyone, but makes decisions based on the best interest of the children in the District.
According to District documents, 13 firms submitted bids to design the new school. Bidders were evaluated along different criteria such as their familiarity with the District, their performance on previous projects and their capability and expertise.
Seven members were chosen to be on the committee to make the award, the majority were District employees, but current Cariños Chancellor Vernon Jaramillo and Public School Facility Authority Regional Manager Irina Ivashkova were also chosen.
Evaluators met in January 2012 to evaluate the bids and assign points to each of the firms. The three firms assigned the highest number of points were: FBT Architects from Albuquerque, SMPC Architects and Greer Stafford SJCF Architects, also based in Albuquerque. All three were invited to interview for the contract.
During the interview process, FBT was given the highest rating with 445 points, followed by Greer with 432 points and finally SMPC, with 396 points.
Committee members presented their findings to Blea, who recommended FBT be awarded the contract to design the Fairview renovation.
“I was new to the job and I did not have a lot of experience with the firm,” Blea said. “Since I did not have a lot of experience, I decided to side with the committee’s recommendation, so that is what I recommended to the Board.”
Despite Blea’s recommendation and the committee members’ evaluations, Board members decided to reject the bid in February 2012, during their regular Board meeting.
“As I remember it, they (FBT) designed the school for 400 children and that was much higher than the District needed,” Medina said. “The state did not want to award the money because it was much more expensive than what was necessary.”
Medina was the Board secretary at the time.
However, Blea said he believed Board members rejected the contract because FBT already had other contracts with the District and members believed they were overworked.
Shortly afterward, District Procurement Officer Gilbert Sanchez wrote an email to Public School Facility Authority Contracts Administrator Dotty McKinney, asking if Board members could award the contract to a firm who ranked second or third in the evaluation.
“The prevailing statute, 13-1-120, is very clear that after the evaluation, the committee shall select, ranked in order of their qualifications — per the evaluation criteria para,” McKinney wrote. “(1) through (7), to the highest ranked firm that meets or exceeds these requirements. The second and third ranked firms did not qualify for an award.”
Rather than accept Blea’s recommendation, Board members decided to place another request for proposal and allow firms to rebid for the contract.
In the rebid, different evaluators were chosen and reevaluated the bids.
This time, Ivashkova was assigned to an observer role and did not participate in the process.
The evaluators met once more in April 2012 and gave SMPC the highest number of points in both the initial and interview phases.Blea recommended the firm and Board members agreed and approved the contract.
There have been issues with the design since SMPC was awarded the contract, especially with cost overruns.
In an email to Chavez, Ian Harmon, the project manager revised the budget to reflect SMPC’s proposal.
In one scenario, the design exceeded the District’s budget by more than $2 million. In the other situation, the District would be $1.4 million over budget.
The other issue is fire suppression. The school requires water in case there is a fire and administrators have two options, either provide a water line that provides water to the school or order a tank that can hold the necessary reserve.
Those involved in the construction wanted a water line. However, the line traverses tribal land and SMPC did not ask the tribe’s permission before recommending that choice.
“If I have one criticism, it would be that water is needed to have a school, and it seems to me that issue should have been researched and planned for before any work got started,” Blea said.
Despite Chavez’s allegations, Medina continues to insist he and other Board members did nothing wrong.