Rebutting the MCC Rebuttal on $34 Million Project – Part 1

Below is Part 1 of the rebuttal from Lakewood bond analyst Steve Willson’s critique (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) to the “Corrections” paper about the critique issued by anonymous McHenry County College officials:

Rebuttal to MCC’s “Corrections in Response to McHenry County Blog Claims”

It’s good that there is on­going discussion of the quality of the study that claims to support a massive, $34 million expansion of the McHenry County College campus. The public should get to see such an important issue debated.

Below I present my rebuttal of the anonymous “Corrections” document given to MCC’s trustees.

Steve Willson, April 28, 2016

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TRANSPARENCY

I reviewed the recommendation to spend $34 million on a massive capital project. I did so under my own name and I gave it to Cal Skinner, who was kind enough to publish it in full for the benefit of the public.

The “Corrections” document was given only to each trustee at the last meeting of MCC’s “Committee of the Whole”. It was not listed on the agenda and has never been published on their web site. Cal Skinner had to make a Freedom of Information Act request to get a full copy of the document.

To date the College still refuses to identify the author.

I leave it to the reader to decide whether this conduct is acceptable.

ROLE OF THE ADMINISTRATION

My first comment goes to the role of the administration, not just of MCC but of any government.

Suppose that you owned a business and that you assigned a task to an employee to determine if facilities needed to be expanded, a major, multimillion dollar capital project.

What kind of response would you expect?

I think that you’d expect a thorough and unbiased analysis.

After all, under one of the most common principles of business law, the “agency rule”, an agent owes allegiance to his master, meaning employees are supposed to act in the best interest of their employer, not in their own self interest.

And if, instead, you got what you considered to be a slanted repot, one that was shaded in favor of a project and that didn’t really provide an objective analysis, you’d probably fire that employee.

If that’s true of employees of private businesses, how much more true is it of government employees, of administrators who are supposed to be acting on the public’s behalf?

Should they not, if anything, be held to an even higher standard?

In short, our public administrators have an obligation to provide thorough and unbiased analysis of such projects.

I will leave it to the reader to decide if that happened in this case.

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME

My second comment goes to how governments should make decisions about big capital projects.

Should governments spend millions of dollars on projects that assume big increases in demand when there is significant debate about such forecasts, or should they be conservative and wait for demand to become apparent, unless there is a major problem with waiting?

Note that I said “significant debate”.

MCC Lab - Lab and Student space now and proposedI’m not even demanding that the administration and the liberal faction of the MCC board agree with my conclusions, I’m only saying where the issue of future enrollment is highly arguable, does it make sense to build now or to wait?

Again, I will leave it to the reader to decide which is the more appropriate action when using the public’s money, and if that is what happened in this case.

RESPONSES TO SPECIFIC POINTS

I will now turn to specific points in my analysis of the need for the $34 million project and the “corrections” from MCC.

The “wish list”

I quote explicitly from the Demonica Kemper documents that the study was NOT based on demand. President Gabbard even said at a recent meeting that department heads were told to “dream” – his word, not mine. That, in my opinion, is a “wish list”.

The “Corrections” document says, “Meeting with the faculty and staff whose job it is to educate the next generation of the MCC community is an imperative part of any Planning Study—not a wish list.”

I agree – it is an imperative part. However, that there may have been further meetings that scaled back the “wish list” does NOT prove that the new spaces are needed; it simply became a smaller “wish list”.
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Comments

Rebutting the MCC Rebuttal on $34 Million Project – Part 1 — 2 Comments

  1. Cal,

    I looked through past articles but can’t find a pertinent question I don’t see in MCC’s data:

    Have they reviewed what coursework they offer for skilled trades, such as machinists, welding, plumbers, auto repair, ect compared to what’s demanded?

    Because a lot of skilled laborers are retiring from those areas, and there is definitely a shortage of qualified, trained individuals.

    (I work with one machine shop, and it takes them three months to find a qualified CNC operator.)

    There is a shortage of skilled workers in, of all places, Detroit and local community colleges have adjusted their curriculum.

    They’re adding labs here at MCC, which certainly helps with science degrees, (provided there is a true need,) but tech training like this is worth the investment, since students could then go on and hold better paid jobs in the county….

  2. JT,

    Great point, but remember to have a program you have to have students who are willing to enter the program.

    That is one of the major issues with the skilled trade labors, younger generation does not see them as a viable option.

    The science labs allow for students to get the course work they need for Nursing and all of the therapies.

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