I just wonder what the Q will say about this. Isn't it just squandering the district's money to do ANOTHER study?
NOTICE
The School District of Borough of Morrisville will accept sealed bids on a proposal for a school facility study of all currently used buildings and grounds of the District. Bids will be received until 10:00 a.m. prevailing time, March 7, 2008 at which time they will be opened and read publicly in Conference Room F-10 of the Middle/ Senior High School, 550 West Palmer Street, Morrisville, PA.
A walk through of the facilities is required. Interested parties may obtain a copy of the Request for Proposal and to schedule a walk through by contacting Reba Dunford, CPA, Business Administrator, School District of Borough of Morrisville, 550 West Palmer Street, Morrisville, PA 19067.
Marlys Mihok, Secretary
Appeared in: Bucks County Courier Times on Saturday, 02/16/2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
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7 comments:
It's like deja vu all over again. But no, thanks to the wonders of their Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) personalities (details from Wikipedia below), this is not squandering, this is doing the greatest, most righteous study ever, and the only one that will ever matter.
1: Faulty reasoning — RWAs are more likely to:
Make many incorrect inferences from evidence.
Hold contradictory ideas that result from a cognitive attribute known as 'compartmentalized thinking'.
Uncritically accept that many problems are ‘our most serious problem.’
Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.
Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.
Use many double standards in their thinking and judgments.
2: Hostility Toward Outgroups — RWAs are more likely to:
Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty such as a Bill of Rights.
Severely punish ‘common’ criminals in a role-playing situation.
Admit they obtain personal pleasure from punishing such people.
Be prejudiced and hostile against racial, ethnic, nationalistic, sexual, and linguistic minorities.
Volunteer to help the government persecute almost anyone.
Be mean-spirited toward those who have made mistakes and suffered.
3: Profound Character Attributes — RWAs are more likely to:
Be dogmatic.
Be zealots.
Be hypocrites.
Be absolutists
Be bullies when they have power over others.
Help cause and inflame intergroup conflict.
Seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive in situations requiring cooperation.
4: Blindness To One’s Own Failings And To The Failings Of Authority Figures Whom They Respect— RWAs are more likely to:
Believe they have no personal failings.
Avoid learning about their personal failings.
Be highly self-righteous.
Use religion to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.
Feasibility studies have a finite life to them, at least if you want the State to help fund the project. I'm not positive, but I believe it is 2 years and I'm fairly certain it has expired.
Now here's the interesting part... when the previous board filed the lawsuit against the borough regarding their denial of the permits it was NOT about pushing through the new building. Instead, it was a way to keep the decision open until the new board was seated and they could (hopefully, quickly) study the situation and make a decision. It was a way to prolong the study and the work that was done. We knew full well that it would never see a court room.
I am sure many people do not believe this, however. They just see it as more money wasted on lawyers. I'm guessing the lawyers were way cheaper than yet another feasibility study is going to be. For those keeping count, this is #4 in a series to study the same problem we had when it started 14 years ago.
I am predicting #4 is not the last book in the series.
On the bright side, Lord of the Rings was only a 3-book series, so we're surpassing that. But get this - the 4th book of the 6-book Dune series is called "God Emperor of Dune". Whoa - you pickin' up what I'm layin' down?
I never read any of these books, but I saw the Dune movie in the theater when it came out - it starred the guy from Twin Peaks, and also featured a Synchronicity-era Sting. It's the only movie I ever went to where they handed out a briefing sheet beforehand so you could keep track of everything. We too have long needed such scorecards in Morrisville.
Oh, I hope it has a happy ending someday!
sigh. Didn't the previous board do all of this already? Wasting time and resources until they get the answer they want.
[To Jon]
Interresting post, but to be honest I think the most interresting part is that both sides of this argument are claiming the other to be Right Winged! Looking back over some of the past posts it humors me to notice this. I myself am left of center (an therefore can escape criticism from both sides), but the truth is, I don't think this problem in Morrisville is "partisan" in the sense of left and right. I think there are just as many Dems supporting public education as GOP's, and visa versa.
[To Peter]
You are right. Each successive board has run their own feasibility study, mostly because the last one expired. (Worob screamed when a new feasibility study was required by the State to make any fixes, claiming the old one was good enough and that the board shouldn't spend any more money.)
In the aggregate you would probably find that each of the four say pretty much the same thing.
The answer is also predicated on how the question is framed, which leads me to this query: Has anyone actually seen the RFP? How does it read? (Is it a request to renovate existing buildings, just some buildings, or is it an open ended request to solve the facilities problems, systemicaly?)
It is interesting (and different) that this board is doing this study at the beginning of it's term. That way, if they choose to take action, it can be irrevocably started before they are voted out of office. The downfall of the last three studies is that the boards who commissioned them did so after considered investigation, study and planning, leaving them scant time to implement the plan before an ignorant electorate, with a knee-jerk reaction, booted them from office.
I am wondering how many legitimate firms will pass up submitting a proposal, being tired of Morrisville's shennanigans or having lost money in one or more of the last RFP cycles and not wanting to waste time when this feasibility study isn't acted on. It's sad, really.
[To Jon, again}
You should have read LotR, then you would have known there were three "VOLUMES", but actually six books.
The Fellowship of the Ring:
Book I The Ring Sets Out
Book II The Ring Goes South
The Two Towers:
Book III The Treason of Isengard
Book IV The Ring Goes East
The Return of The King:
Book V The War of the Ring
Book VI The End of the Third Age
O.K., so I am a Tolkein dork! The point is, for some things there are often more sub-divisions than are popularly acknowledged. The 4 (or more) books of "The Lord of Morrisville" probably hide many more subtle sub-stories.
As a critic of my "Fixers and Disposers" blog noted, there are actually some shades of grey. (A response to that is in the works.)
[To Norma]
Beaurocracy at its finest, to be sure. The responses to the feasibilty (which itsself will probably be crafted in such a way as to encourage specific responses) will be promoted or discarded based on the boards desires. "This one is too costly", "This one is too close to my house", etc...
Borows, thanks for the personal replies. I got my LotR info from Wikipedia. I'm borrowing from the Colbert Report here, but ...if you can't trust the marketplace for the truth, who can you trust?
Anyway, as far as the Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) personality goes, you'll have to take this with a grain of salt because it's from Wikipedia, but it says:
The "right-wing" in right-wing authoritarianism does not refer to someone's politics but to their personality. It means the person has a strong need to submit to those they consider the established authorities in society.
So it's really not a Democratic or Republican thing. Only problem is, I haven't seen any articles on how to effectively combat this type of personality.
Is it just me, or is feasibility study a misnomer as used here?
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