posted by Mike Madison at 3:15 PM /
Mt. Lebanon structural engineer Dirk Taylor has written another letter to Mt. Lebanon School District Superintendent Dr. Tim Steinhauer and the members of the School Board. Blog readers will remember that back in August, Mr. Taylor prepared a long critique of the current proposal for renovation/reconstruction of the Mt. Lebanon High School and submitted that material to the Superintendent and the Board.
Mr. Taylor authorized me to post his recent letter here. The letter follows:
Mr. Taylor authorized me to post his recent letter here. The letter follows:
Labels: dirk taylor, high school renovation
14 Comments:
There is no doubt that school board directors have spent countless hours dealing with the complexities of planning a renovation for the high school. Serving in this capacity has to be a thankless job, especially with all the turfing that goes on among various groups in our community. Additionally, I am aware that Mr. Taylor is well respected in his field and he has also sacrificed a significant amount of personal time to analyze the proposed project while asking some pertinent questions. I have fully supported our school district for the past 16 years, investing my personal time and monetary resources as well. Where is the leadership in all of this and why has Aldo Coffee become the venue to sort out such a high stakes initiative for everyone in this community? We need to have some dialogue. Is there anyone who can figure out a way to make it happen? I receive e-mail from J. Strasbaugh about community events, could that be used as a vehicle to facilitate discussion? There are board meetings, but the attendance is low and I am usually working when they are scheduled. There was a survey, but nobody asked me. Something has to give here and I, for one, would like to see Mr. Taylor's questions answered.
--Charlotte Stephenson
Mike,
When you post a document on Scribd, would you mind also posting a direct link to the document? Some people, like me, cannot use Scribd because the site relies upon proprietary browser plug-ins that do not work in certain environments. (Scribd does offer an option to download documents, but the option is locked-up behind a registration wall.)
Cheers,
Tom
Tom,
I've added a direct link. If it still doesn't work, just let me know.
Why is it that I can have coffee with the manager of Mt. Lebanon on a monthly basis, and the school board won't give Dirk Taylor the time of day? I have never met the man, but Dirk Taylor is right on the money. I wish I knew more about how the school board operates. Who do they answer to? How can they have so much power? Where are the checks and balances? Why don't they have to be transparent? We had a survey, the results were posted, and where did it get us? Will someone explain this to me?
Elaine Gillen
Sorry, Mike, I should have been more clear. Can you post a direct link to the source document, not the document as it is hosted on Scribd? That is, can you link to the PDF file itself and not have that link point toward Scribd? (Of course, if it's convenient for you, it's okay to use Scribd as your go-to document-publishing option. It's just that having a non-Scribd, link-to-the-source option allows folks like me to read these documents.)
Cheers,
Tom
The School Board, the Superintendent and the Architects are all stonewalling Dirk Taylor.
The election is coming and people will have to choose school leadership that will live up to their election promises to communicate with the community not just parents and the teachers' union.
The Board and the Superintendent should line up to School Board Policy that does not allow facilities issues to be discussed in Executive Session.
Passing a Board Policy is like the municipality passing a law. The Superintendent has the responsibility to follow the law. Instead the communications continue behind closed doors and Mr. Taylor's professional efforts are ignored.
If you were treated like Mr. Taylor would you waste your time to volunteer for a school board committee assignment?
If you don't have Flash and can't see the Scribd version of the Taylor letter, please be patient. Later today (Thursday) I will convert it to an image and upload it to Blogger. (A free third-party host is the best I can do.)
I wonder if the entire *system* (ie. Superintendent, Board, CM, architects) are mute on advice of counsel ? If so, perhaps they are concerned about potential litigation and surcharges ?
Mr. Taylor was nice enough to set aside some time Tuesday night to go over some of his ideas at the high school. He and I met at the school and spoke in more detail about some of his concerns and possible solutions.
My understanding is that the architects are currently working on putting something together that addresses many of the issues raised by Mr. Taylor. That response by the architects should be presented this month at one of the Board meetings.
Hopefully there will be a way to post that here. If not, I will try to do something over at my blog.
James
James
I'd like to think that the Architects will give us a credit for the gratis work performed by Mr. Taylor on their behalf. But the realist in me thinks that they'll send us a bill for reviewing his report and explaining to us why they disagree.
Dave F.-
I'm betting what we'll actually see is something along the line of a glitzy virtual reality tour of their design as a response.
Taylor's specific questions won't be addressed.
Hope I'm wrong.
Dean Spahr
This morning I read the sentence below in an e-mail and thought of Celli Flynn and Friends:
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
I admire Mr. Taylor and commend him for providing this input when doing something like that could end up contrary to the interests of his business. I'm sure it won't, but strictly from a business point of view one normally wouldn't chance alienating a customer. So however this all ends up, Mr. Taylor is up a notch in my book for acting according to how he sees his duty to his community.
Why did Celli Flynn hire a second architect from Chicago?
Does either architect have the capacity to listen to the structural engineer for our district?
Could their lack of co-operation with Mr. Taylor lead to a safety issue in our high school building?
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