Two Española School Board members got into a verbal altercation at the Oct. 5 Board meeting, after Superintendent Eric Martinez tried to push through the approval of a contract for an item that was not on the agenda.
Martinez attempted to get Board approval for the no-bid contract totaling more than $370,000, which would have been given to School Equipment, Inc. The company hired basketball coach Richard Martinez last spring, to install playground equipment at Alcalde Elementary.
Last school year, former superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez fired Richard Martinez for allegedly mistreating students and mismanaging money raised from athletic fundraisers. He was reinstated, but has been moved, pending a hearing with the Department of Education.
For now, Richard Martinez is working in the superintendent’s office and Eric Martinez and staff are remaining tight-lipped about what his duties are.
The yet-to-be-scheduled hearing would determine whether the Department will revoke his teaching and coaching licenses. Parents and approximately 150 students and educators attended the meeting. Some did not hide their feelings, and rolled their eyes, when Eric Martinez attempted to award a bleacher and press box project to School Equipment, Inc., with the help of his three strongest supporters: Board President Pablo Lujan, Vice President Lucas Fresquez and Secretary Annabelle Almager. The meeting agenda advertised track and field upgrades, not the project for which the superintendent was trying to get approval.
The meeting discussion became so intense at times, that it appeared Board members Yolanda Salazar and Almager might start fighting. The pair eventually regained their composure after a television news reporter questioned their conduct as elected officials.
Before the two Board members had their disagreement, District parent Monica Archuleta confronted the Board, during an impromptu public input session. The public input portion of the meeting violated the state’s Opens Meetings Act and Robert’s Rules of Order because it wasn’t listed as an agenda item and the Board engaged the speakers, respectively.
Monica Archuleta sought clarification about which project would be approved and an explanation for how the wrong item ended up on the agenda.
“I was told to be here for the approval of the track and field,” Monica Archuleta said, her voice rising steadily. “Are we here for the approval of bleachers and the press box or the re-do of the track and football field? Because they are two totally different things.”
Eric Martinez attempted to explain the mix-up that almost led to the Board handing out the contract. He said the District conducted two work sessions that reviewed the project’s various stages, including cost, and the two dissenting Board members, Salazar and Ruben Archuleta missed most, if not all, of those meetings.
“The track, itself, will be about $590,000 and it has to be replaced either way,” Eric Martinez said stumbling over his words. “We can spend $100,000 repairing it. The problem is, if we intend to put a turf field in, we are looking at $1.3 million, but we can’t put the track in first because if you put in the track first and heavy equipment goes over it, you take a chance of ruining it.”
However, Monica Archuleta wasn’t so quick to accept the superintendent’s explanation.
“I feel like it is a bait and switch,” she said. “This just gives me a bad feeling, especially with everything that goes on.”
Eric Martinez’s explanation that the District needed to build the press box first because they had to do the track and field at the same time, conflicted with information from Bosque Farm’s Lone Mountain Contracting officials gave the Board during a Sept. 19 work session. Lone Mountain is the only company the Board has sought proposals from for the track and field upgrades in August.
The company’s General Manager Tessie Edmond told the Board the project could be completed in any order, despite what Eric Martinez told the packed auditorium at the Oct. 5 meeting.
He said the Board decided to go with the bleacher and press box portion of the project first and install the football field and eight-lane track at a later date because that is all the District could afford.
“We can definitely put in the track first,” Edmond told the Board, Sept. 19, in response to a question from Eric Martinez. “It would mean moving heavy equipment over it when we do the field, that would he pretty unavoidable. That means we would take steps to protect the track as we go back and forth over it.”
Bait and switch
The Board reviewed the project in detail Sept. 19 and Oct. 3 with Edmond and her sales manager, Myles Sanchez. But those presentations hardly mentioned the bleachers and press box portion of the project.
Edmond and Sanchez said they didn’t focus on the press box and bleacher part of the project because District officials told them they had already chosen a contractor to do that part.
The project Edmond and Sanchez outlined for the District included a $1.5 million track and field project without the proposed $372,265 press boxes and bleachers package.
Although School Equipment, Inc., has completed several jobs throughout the District over the years, including similar bleacher projects in the Española Valley High School gymnasium, it appears the company has received an uptick of work from the time Richard Martinez worked for the company in the spring, until the present. The company has completed about five separate contracts at the high school, since June 1, totaling $123,638.44
The District spent $75,505 to have the company install outdoor furniture; $13,743.49 to apply a protective coat on the outdoor furniture; $17,751.25 for gymnasium floor covers and other equipment; $8,691 to purchase 200 chairs for graduation and $7,947 to buy 50 chairs for the gymnasium.
School Equipment, Inc. officials did not return several phone calls seeking comment regarding their relationship with Richard Martinez or his current status with the company.
The District is allowed to hire School Equipment, Inc., through a no-bid contract because the company is a Cooperative Educational Services vendor. Cooperative Educational Services is a nonprofit collective organized by the state’s 89 school districts to secure goods and services without going through the procurement process.
Educational Services Executive Director David Chavez said although the collective’s vendors go through a “vigorous vetting” process, Cooperative Educational Services officials do not have control over a vendor’s personnel choices.