We posted an article regarding the Greenburgh Central School Districts' Board of Education and their vote to let Superintendent Tahira Chase's contract expire in 2021 and not extend/renew it. Superintendent Tahira Chase championed the schools campus consolidation bond that was voted down 2 to 1 against the plan. That plan was originally said to have a price tag of $114.9 million dollars. After some investigative work, we learned that the cost would be almost double the promised amount after you added in the bond's interest. When residents questioned Superintendent Chase and the School Board about the final numbers, she insisted on that the cost was only going to be $114.9 million dollars. She neglected to add the interest which would have increased the overall project to beyond $200 million dollars! Imagine with everything going on in our Covid 19 world what would have happened had this gone through?
Proposing the $114.9 million dollars plus interest of debt to build new school buildings was publicly spearheaded by Superintendent Chase, Assistant Superintendent for Business Mary O’Neill, David Warner and Trustee Terry Williams. In fact, as we recall, during one of those meetings, Superintendent Chase made light of one of the questions raised by mockingly having a back-and-forth with Ms O'Neil. "Ms O'Neil, someone said the bond is going to cost more than $114 million dollars. Is that true?" "I don't know where they would have gotten that idea?" "So, it isn't true?" "No." In actuality the cost is $114.9 million dollars plus the unmentioned interest, again over $200 million dollars!
Now that the Superintendent's contract has been voted upon not to renew or extend, we've learned that Ms O'Neil has decided to resign her rather lucrative position from the Administration. In fact, we saw it on the agenda for this Wednesday night's meeting (below).
We acknowledge that anyone can quit a job whenever they feel like it, but the optics of this resignation come at an interesting juncture with this failed administration. The School Board appears to finally be doing something to improve what has been the inept management of the Chase administration and then suddenly Ms O'Neil decides to leave.
Some of the Administrations failures include the consolidation effort at a cost of roughly $700,000, along with spending about $270,000 for all of the moves from the Mansion to the other various schools. The premature evacuation of the Early Childhood Program from the mansion as well as concurrently contacting the media that the building was structurally unsound and needed to be evacuated immediately without engaging the Board is also troubling. She initiated a suite of offices be constructed almost immediately for her staff in the Woodlands High School, while the administration personnel continued to work in the Mansion (for another month) and the maintenance department continues working out of the mansion to this day! Roughly speaking, she wasted nearly one million desperately needed dollars that could have been used for building repairs, hiring teachers, resource officers, student programs and more.
With the sudden resignation of Mary O'Neil, we believe a full and thorough forensic audit is needed of the district and this administration to ensure that all monies are where they are supposed to be, have not been spent or misappropriated and that expenditures, bids and services are all being billed and paid for correctly. Until both Superintendent Chase and Assistant Superintendent of Business O'Neil actually leave their positions, they owe it to the district to fulfill the remainder of their time in a professional and forthright manor. Anything less would be a theft of services. It's the only way we can get A Better Greenburgh School District.
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