More dispatches from the NHMCCD front…
DISCLAIMER: I want to make something abundantly clear. I am supporting Fred Blanton, J.B. Crowder, and Dr. David Holsey for NHMCCD Board positions. They happen to be buying advertizing space on LST and I thank them for that, but I would be supporting them whether they were or not since the amount of OBSCENE PROFITS I make around here is completely unaffected by how much money is brought in by advertizing (10 times zero is still zero.) This is my opinion, and my opinion only and may or may not be the opinion of any other person, real or imaginary.
Fred Blanton’s opponent, Charlotte Lampe, who just happened to have signed up to run AFTER the board was handed it’s head back in May, has on several occasions talked to me and others about a report prepared by Gilbane Construction. As you can see from the link, Gilbane has built a number of NHMCCD’s facilities over the years. This report purportedly details the costs associated with the refurbishment of two of the eight sections (modules) of the old TI/Compaq facility on US 290 at Barker-Cypress, which is up for sale. I say purportedly because to date I have been unable to get anyone to show me this report. Charlotte Lampe promised to fax a copy to me this weekend but has failed to do so. The HCAD tax rolls list it’s value at a little over 8.8 million dollars. Back in 2004, Mr. Blanton who was unsuccsessfully running for a board position then, proposed that the facility would make an excellent campus to help with NHMCCD’s overcrowding and would be in an excellent position to serve the students from Cy-Fair. Fred asked a personal friend, a construction manager who has supervised over 800 million dollars in projects at the Texas Medical Center, who convinced a noted architect and his structural engineer (P.E.) to inspect and review the property as a favor to Mr. Blanton and to give him a verbal report of the feasibility of using the building as a satellite campus. The building was given a verbal clean bill of health by Mr. Blanton’s volunteer consultants, it has had new AC chillers installed in 2004 as well as new paint and carpet at that time. The building was occupied by Compaq/HP for about 2 months after major refurbishments before the facility was vacated. Since then, a maintenance crew has maintained the building while HP sorted out what they wanted to do with the facility. The facility has a direct link to the internet backbone and in fact all of HP’s Houston internet traffic still passes through the facility.
The husband of Maria Flotte O’Neill, NHMCCD board position 6, just happens to have been (and may still be, I’m looking into that) a high level executive at Gilbane, by the way, and Gilbane was the company that did the 80 million dollar design/build project for Cy-Fair for the Berry Education (edification?) Center AND the expansion of Cy-Fair HS. Charlotte Lampe, Fred Blanton’s opponent, as well as Mr. Randy Bates, the incumbent that both are trying to unseat, both commented upon Gilbane’s report that it woud cost 85 Million to refurbish just two of the 8 modules in the facility at a Copperfield Republicans Club meeting on 9/11/06. The report purportedly claims that the facility is in the flood plain (Not according to Harris County Flood Control, there is no record of it ever flooding, not even during Allison.), and would cost 85 million dollars to refurb just 1/4 of the facility.
But there is a funny thing about that report. NHMCCD claims via a response to a TXPIA request by Fred Blanton that it does not exist and that the college has no such a report, from Gilbane or anyone else. So who is right? I can say this. If the college DOES have such a report and has failed to produce it, Mr Laughter is in violation of state law and faces criminal charges for falsifying a government document on the reply and information contained herein on the letter dated September 25 and postmarked on September 27. I met with Charlotte Lampe back on the 17th at the opening of the GOP Victory Center on FM 1960 and she insisted that she had a copy of the non-existant report IN HER BRIEFCASE, and was hoping that Paul Bettancourt would show up so that she could give it to him.
Developing……..
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Is this the same Compaq facility that Univ. of Houston wants to purchase for a new northwest campus?
JohnRH: YES - it’s one and the same….
“When spending your money - my view will always be “money for minds NOT monuments”
(Excerpt taken directly from Charlotte L. Lampe’s website http://lampeforeducation.com/, who is running for the office of Trustee Position 8 for the North Harris Montgomery Community College District.)
Anytime someone tells me that they have plans for spending my money I have a tendency to get just a tad uneasy. Ms. Lampe says she wants to restore trust and goodwill within the community with accountability and transparency. To what is she referring? Is she implying that NHMCCD has lost the community’s trust? How so? She doesn’t elaborate. If she’s on the Cy-Fair College President’s Advisory Board, she must have been very informed of The District’s intent to hide a nearly quarter billion dollar bond referendum vote on District property. She must have been well informed as to who was on the ballot for the postponed trustee election. She wasn’t on that ballot in May, but now she is. Why? What has changed since May that she feels a need to step into the political limelight and assure voters she can do a better job than the current incumbents? Where does she stand on this bond referendum?
Didn’t she support the Cy-Fair board who “built” the “Berry Education MONUMENT?”
LOL.
#2 is it? it was my understanding that the facility that UH was looking at was on 249 and Louetta, this facility is on US 290 at Barker Cypress. I believe we are talking about two different campuses here.
Oops! mea culpa!…..
#5, additionally the facility that UH was looking at was a multi-story building, had something like 3 multi-level parking garages, and would market for about 250 mil, the developer was magnanimously offering to sell it to UH for only 35 mil.
According to The Observer newspapers, Lampe advised the board to split up the bond referendum because she felt that the inclusion of the sports complex would hinder passage of the referendum.
http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1574&pag=628&dept_id=532207&search=1&ls=0&sortby=1&TITLE=&tp=0&FULL=lampe&fp=2&AUTHOR=&ap=0&DateRange=2001&x=17&y=9
#7, you want me to buy a premium membership to HCN so I can read this link?
(LOL)
#8, I Would never hear of asking you do do that, but if you so desire, feel free. If I can find a way to post the article or a link to same without violating a copyright or something I will update.
I’ve been informed that the links to O’Neil and Bates do not work. I’m working on that.
let me know if the links still don’t work, if they don’t, I may have to resort to something else.
ok, it would appear the link does not work if you click on it but if you right click and copy the link path and then open a new browser tab/window and paste it in the address bar, it works… intriguing.
Perhaps LST is now persona non-grata over at NHMCCD and they’ve blocked incoming links, or it might merely be that their web code doesn’t like incoming links to an aspx driven webpage, either is possible.
Holy Crap! Very Interesting~ All I wanted to know was what the school bond in Montgomery County pertained to….This has nothing to do with Conroe ISD, right? (?)
Not only does it not have anything to do with Conroe ISD, it doesn’t have anything to do with NHMCCD either near as I can tell.
I’ve been told by a little bird that Roy Laughter has my other NHMCCD post blown up to 11X17 and hanging on his office wall, perhaps as a dart board. It would appear we may have struck a nerve here.
Drudgeschach ™
You should put a flashing red siren at the top of this article.
Don
#14! Way cool…..ROTFL….
#15 - I agree
Also - there are times I’ve thought I’ve been locked out of the NHMCCD website - they just seem to have a lot of problems in that area.
Also - I honestly DO have a “premium” account with HCN papers. For 3 months only….ONLY until the end of NOV…..
(I want to see what the “goons” are up to! And I want to see how far they will go in their one-sided reporting!)
I am checking my memory and the many visits to various political clubs; and I guess to take a line from President Bush “your are either with us or against us” and I would guess that would apply to two or three of the candidates in position #8 and would also apply to the other two positions. I do not recall Lampe supporting the Republican Candidate in the May election so under the “Presidents’s” statement, it would then be prudent to say that the Democrat was getting the support of Ms. Lampe; at least she did nothing to support the Clear Republican in the position that she now is running for.
In the same reasoning she certainly was not voicing any opposition and more like defending the savings of the reduced polling locations and the bond issue of the 1/4 BILLION DOLLARS and basically defending it to the hilt. So in the “President’s” reasoning it looks like a clear support for the bonds, as there was never any outward opposition, but a lot of carefully worded defense.
In reading further about Mr. Bates in this case, he never voiced any opposition to the bonds or the reduced polling locations, and in fact is on record as voting in favor, so he too, would be a safe bet that the was in favor of the “illegal election” and the 1/4 BILLION DOLLAR bond issue.
If we search open records we find that Ms. Lampe (if there are not identical named twins) also was one of the larger contributors to the “Team” back in the 2004 NHMCCD board election. It was the same “Team” members that voted 9-0 (that nine-zip) to put over this 1/4Billion dollar bond issue on the voters and also made if difficult for the seniors and the disabled to vote in this election. Dare I say that finding a handicapped parking place for my parents (seniors) was near impossible on the campus that they went to, as all of the “un-policed” handicapped parking places were filled to the gills…. This “Team” did not send any mail ballots out to the seniors or the disabled, no they mailed some dumb post card that I got after the early vote had ended, telling me that it started 9 days before and would be ended the day before I got it.
Well I guess I will do some more looking into the character, and real history of the candidates running in this election as it looks like we could fall victim of the same treatment that the Cy-Fair ISD voters got. Seems like some organization over there in the 1990s headed up by one of the candidates in this race threw the incumbents out and got their’s elected and then just as you would expect they too passed a big bond issue and election, and with the guidance and help of these new whippersnapper we got a big bond issue passed in early 2001; (I think April) and what a shock we got the Berry Education center out of it. If you don’t know what that is, then take a look at this link on channel 13:
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=local&id=4566984
Now I’m a little older and smelling the roses is a little harder now days, but the smell of possum and skunk is a smell this old Republican elephant never forgets….. I think I will do a little more searching on other mediums and see what I can dig up, maybe a skeleton or two will give the DNA I’m scratching for; as rideonthewind put it last week it looks like we might have another “Ricochet” in the works and this one seems to be growing…. a little bigger..
Has anyone asked about Lampe and her FOCUS group? I can’t seem to open this link, but there is a fascinating story about “the blood sport” called school-board politics: (I’ll see if I can find a better link….)
http://www.houstonpress.com/search/results.php?issue=210
6. News
The Year-Round Go-Round
Cy-Fairs experiment with year-round schools is being watched by other local districts. What they’re seeing isn’t pretty.
By Brian Wallstin
Published: January 11, 1996
Few things challenge the sanity and decorum of well-adjusted suburbanites more than an issue that involves their children’s education. For the past three years, year-round schooling has…
#7 Sports Complex? I live in the area and once voted for their bonds, but, no more. Where did money for a sports complex come from? That’s a new one on me. I’m still mad that Tomball moved their HC branch of the library to the 249 campus.
JRB, it is technically called the Berry Education Center, but the only “education” that would appear to go on there is of the PE type. As to where the money came from, take out your wallet, open it up and when the moths finish flocking out, check to see how much is left and then ask me again.
Since we are sidetracking a little bit on the Berry Center, I wanted to mention that CyFair ISD is having their public meeting to discuss the tax rate for 2006-07. It is this Thursday at the offices on Jones Road at 7pm. There is a copy of the meeting notice and budget comparison on the Cy-Fair Citizens web site.
As an employee of NHMCCD and having sat on committees that planned out expansions and refurbs within the district, I do remember discussions around the district’s decision makers about the possibility of utilizing the old T.I. acreage at the SH-290/Barker-Cypress area, but I recall no real feasibility study being created from those discussions. This comes from discussions within the employee meetings within the district’s “opening day” meetings, and was mentioned in passing during the consideration of the district’s planning stage for a new “Cy-Fair College”. I believe (from a somewhat faulty memory, admittedly) that the thinking was that there would not be the ability to apparently sub-divide the acreage, and that the district would have to buy the whole lot, which made the purchase too expensive, even if the facilities could be renovated. I could be wrong, but if there was such a formalized study, I believe it would have been readily available to the Board members, as such discussions were taking place within the entire district. And, yes, a “squelching” of such a report would be in violation of law, if that were the case. I think we should be careful as to what we decide to call a “report”, as it could simply be a printout of a PowerPoint presentation given at one of those types of meetings.
DEEP PURPLE; You are fast, I just found that also the article:
http://www.houstonpress.com/Issues/1996-01-11/news/news.html
Some excerpts:
“Year-round is growing throughout the country,” O’Brien adds. “And I am convinced, along with most people, that eventually, it’s going to get here.”
Not if Charlotte Lampe has anything to say about it. Since 1992, when Cy-Fair began the pilot program that eventually led to districtwide implementation, she’s had plenty to say about year-round education. Most of it’s been bad, some of it’s been downright nasty, and, according to some detractors, it’s all been an outright lie.
But there’s no question it’s been effective. Lampe and the anti-year-round group she formed, Families Organized for Our Children’s Unified School Year, or FOCUS, have forced a profound reversal in the Cy-Fair district’s policy.
The Article goes on further to say:
“To pro-year-rounders, the option to choose is insult atop injury. In the last two years, they have been severely wounded at the ballot box after relentless campaigns by FOCUS led to the election of three new anti-year-rounders to the seven-member board of trustees.”
“Meanwhile, Lampe and FOCUS cranked their operation up to a new level of sophistication. And things began to get truly ugly. Once a vocal group of rabble-rousing pamphlet pushers, FOCUS began inspecting the campaign contribution reports of trustees and filing open records requests. One such request sought the names of parent and teacher volunteers who helped develop the year-round program. That led one set of parents to sue, requesting a temporary restraining order and claiming fear of “imminent bodily harm” if overzealous anti-year-rounders found out who they were.”
“In fact, she found that the majority of contributors to the pro-year-round group were businesses and individuals, most from outside the district, who had contracts with the Cy-Fair ISD, including the district’s legal counsel, Bracewell & Patterson.”
BUT WAIT A MINUTE: Didn’t Lampe contribute and help the same BOARD MEMBERS THAT ARE SO CONFILCTED? We have a tangled webb spun here and it’s getting deeper as we go. Exactly what are the connections in the college board members and the Vendors and contractors? And is this not the wolfe with chicken feather hanging out of her mouth, while the flock of chickens are missing?
THE END OF THE ARTICLE GOES LIKE THIS:
” Former trustee John Mahoney thinks the strife in the district may be just beginning. He worries that FOCUS members will attempt to set the agenda for the entire district, using school board and bond elections to get their way. He’s already irate that Lampe is criticizing the district for the cost of its new administration building.
“I predict that if they get the upper hand,” Mahoney says, “you will never get rid of them.”
That would suit Charlotte Lampe just fine. She’s found she has a talent for the blood sport that is school-board politics. ”
Then there is another article or interview with Lampe that is very confusing… and like “Hillary” when the fire gets hot she dropps off….. you be the judge:
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0102/03/smn.16.html
It’s almost like she is doing her favorite thing of taking both sides of the issue and then disappears!
Well I’ll wait for more info as it seems that this story is getting bigger and bigger by the minute. I wonder when and it all the truth be known if we’ll have the “blood sport” at the colleges on Firday nights, instead of foozeball!
#22: Jay Haggard; At the Copperfield Republican meeting on 9-11-2006 Ms. Lampe and Mr. Bates both emphatically stated that they had a report that said that to remodel 2 buildings would cost $85 MILLION dollars and that was just $5 million less than the CyFair Campus. This is 2006 and the Cy-Fair campus was bid in built in 2001, 5 years ago and the price of tea in China was a lot less, price of copper was about 1/4 and the price of most all building materials was about 1/2 of todays costs. One person attending the meeting was in the Construction business and mentioned that the cost for $85 MILLION was figuriung to be $700-800 per sq ft. when new construction is about $125-150 for a community college.
So if you your running for a position on the ENRON board…. that might work, but the taxpayers in this district don’t buy the BS…. I for one would not feel conmfortable having people on the board rubber stamping things like this and if that was a demonstration of their smarts, then they just lost any credibility that they could ever think of having, and I want to make sure that the world knows…… we just don’t need “sleeping board members” and especially when the enrollment is not where it was projected to be and the severe ethical crisis that looms at the community college system.
Brushing off all that has happened has brought the light of day on to this fieasco and it needs to be fixed and a new board is needed…. and not friends and cronies of the old one either.
collegewatcher # 24 - add to the cost of new construction verses remodel. a “remodel” is always 1/3 more than what it would cost to do “new construction” of the same scope of work.
You are correct about the cost of building materials over the last 5 years. Costs have risen at least 30% and in some cases such as drywall its closer to 50%.
The cost of custom cabinetry which would be needed due to a remodel will not usually fit prefab - has also risen 40% in the last 4 years.
when it comes to construction costs, everythink has risen except my salary.
You can not compare the cost of new construction to the cost of a remodel - it is apples to oranges.
Has anyone asked about Lampe what happened to the report in her briefcase
#4 - based on what I know, that’s correct. The flood-prone TI facility out on 290 is for “sublease”. I don’t know if the CCA buildings on the HP/Compaq campus ever did wind up going to U of H, but I hear that there was some sort of controversy brewing abou that…
And from what I know, the cost to refurbish that facility was approximately 15 million, including the parking lot, a new cafeteria, and building out the modules and “spine”.
It will show up right before the election… just like Hillary’s billing records and we are all to just take a page from “Clayton Williams handbook:” “just sit back and enjoy it!
It’s a “liberal educrat thing”…you know….
I do know, from talking to several people with HP, that they spent a bundle on remodeling the 290 facility and completed the work, of just about all new stuff in March of ‘04 and then moved out at the end of April of ‘04. They say it is still operational and all of their data goes through there….
I will search for the details on the building, it’s something like 120 ac. and a new park & ride lot is on a portion of the facility or going to be built…
My first thought is that it might be cheaper than renting a MILLION DOLLARS WIRTH OF PORTABLE BUILDINGS and we would not have to fix the whole thing at once.
Ditto on the pay and money, as I agree that revenue is scarseeeeee but my taxes did not go down on the college either when you figure my new values and the $.004 that is like nothing compared to the 3% increase in value of my home, and I’m not 65 yet so no freezeeeee.
#28 jimb; the candidates Lampe and Bates told everybody emphatically that it was $85 MILLION DOLLARS and that was just $5 MILLION LESS than the cost of the Cy-Fair Campus. Herd it with my own ears.
I guess ENRON has a job for them. Check the location on the link above on the HACD account… I don’t see any flood plain designation on the property and HCAD generally has that, on GOOGLE MAPS there is a gulley running through the property…. I would assume it fills up with water, but they are building a high school and shopping center around it on ground lower….. than the HP facility…. GO FIGURE..
I would not think that 15 million would be the right number for the 600-700,000 sq. ft….. that would be too low. What is really needed is an outside non political evaluation to settle the score, and it would need more than a walk through, but as I understand from the “walk through” there was evidence enough to make it worth looking into, and it it saves me my tax money, then I’m for it.
OH add to #30 it was $85 MILLION FOR EXACTLY 2 (TWO) buildings…and not the whole thing…..
Basically, what they did to that building when they gave it its “face lift” was to re-surface the parking lots, build out a reasonably nice cafeteria in the old cafeteria area, carpet the hallways that previously were shared with forklifts, remodel some conference auditoriums, and build a decent facade over the 290 entrance.
That doesn’t count the costs of building out the individual “modules” and bringing an additional power trunk line into the building.
So the total over the time the building was used as office space (not counting the times before and after that in which it was used as warehouse space) may have been more than 15 mil, but I can’t see 85 million.
That is the number that Lampe and Bates were quoting for 2 of the modules. I would think that the warehouses would cost more than the built out spaces, but from the details that I have seen, the engineering drawings that I have also examined, there may be adequate utilities down the center “mall” that is somehting like 100,000 sq. ft (don’t quote me) but without a real analysis we are all blowing in the wind, but for these two candidates to say that they had a report and that it was $85 MILLION for 2 buildings, reminds me of the sheep following the tail in front of them over the cliff or into the butcher shop…. not with my tax money!
But is the building is worth any more then why is
HCAD appraising it under $10 million?
Are we getting “Hummed”???????????
#33 - could the reason HCAD values it under $10 million is because it is unoccupied and for sale, and is being treated as inventory cost? I’ve seen low figures on other properties for sale and have always assumed that to be the answer. I’d like someone in the know to let me know if that’s right or not.
From first hand experience, let me tell you, even with the improvements, the place is a dump. It is great as a wareouse/distribution facility, but it sucks as office space. Its value is diminished greatly, IMO, because of that. I notice that they’ve been increasing the capacity of the flood retention areas in front of and behind the place because of the park-and-ride they’re building.
I certainly don’t trust the numbers that are getting thrown around by these folks, but I personally think the place would *suck* for a college facility.
As far as flooding goes, I’ve personally experienced 2 different weeks where the parking lot flooded due to Cypress Creek backing up due to heavy rains. We had to part at Trader’s Village and get bussed over to the rear entrance off Jarvis (the only one that didn’t flood). The building never flooded, but there were “legends” of it flooding in the TI days.
The only saving grace for Cy-Woods HS, in my opinion is a lot more flood retention areas have been constructed over there recently, and I don’t think that the high school is so close to Cypress Creek as before. I suspect that all of that area “used” to be flood plain before they re-drew the map. I haven’t lived in Houston but about 12 years, but I can only imagine that that was lightly developed land for the longest time for a reason…
It looks like the drainage improvements going in will make a difference, but we’ll see…
Strange we seem to be in a P$%^ing match here. Seems that the issue is the success of the College district and the operation of which no one seems to be addressing. Looks like one candidate wants it hushed and asks no questions except in the patterns of the past and the other is trying to clean up the waste and has created a stir by asking questions that the administration does not like!
OK, kids time for some reality checks. First, you should know that Blanton himself is driving this thread. He only has credibility in the circles that frequent this board and only because he has manage to dupe most of you into thinking he is some kind of conscientous conservative leader. So here is a JUICY TIDBIT OF REALITY:
Why don’t you ask your great conservative leader what he was doing at the Kingwood Democratic meeting recently? Yes, Freddie boy we saw you. Is he trying to play both sides against the middle? That’s a dangerous game to play, Fred, in a the very partisan world in which you try to operate. You’re going to get burnt Freddie by the real conservatives. We don’t take kindly to snake-oil salesmen…
Its pretty obvious whats this weasel is trying to do. While he claims conservative credentials, he is not well supported or liked by the real base. His small fish status, has caused him to have to broaden his efforts to get any kind of attention payed to his little swampy land scam.
For God’s sake, just accept that no one is going to bite Fred. That you have been able to cast yourself as some community conscious activist in the blogosphere is a miracle wrought only by the advertising $$ that he throws at this site…
I couldn’t of said it better businessleader….
#37, 38; When you are that desparate, it shows. When you are that ignorant …..well it looks like you two are driving this thread into the “gutter” of politicts, if you have to resort ot name calling. Grow up, I guess you can’t read all of the other comments before yours!
From what I just read in the HCN papers online no one credible is buying your false claims of a “swampy land scam” ……..
#37/38.
Boo-hoo-hoo. Talk about needing a “reality-check” I haven’t voted in YEARS!!!, but when I witnessed FIRST HAND the hyprocasy and deciet practised by the so-called “leadership” at NHMCCD, I just had to STEP UP, SPEAK UP, AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I perceive Ms. Lampe as a wild and out of line liberal educrat who merely poses as a conservative as it fits “her political agenda”!
I don’t care if Blanton is a democrat, republican, independent, or a Martian. His platform is to get rid of the money grubbing, big tax spenders who don’t give a CRAP about education other than how it lines their pockets and the pockets of their insider buddies.
And as far as some “bogus land deal” that NEVER EXISTED, HCN papers backed off big time by printing the following :
Letter to the Editor: Facts about a land deal that never existed
http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17294870&BRD=1574&PAG=461&dept_id=532249&rfi=6
Bah! Phooey on you two-y!
muahahahahaha.