Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Project Analyst
West Contra Costa Unified School District
1400 Marina Way South
Richmond, CA 94804
510-307-4588
2015 Updates
The following documents were prepared after the posting of the draft Agreed Upon Procedures
portion of the performance audit to the CBOC website on April 16, 2015. This is not meant to be a
definitive or thorough take of the audit, but merely a quick read on some of the parts within it.
One of the phrases that appear frequently within the draft audit is Proposition 39. This is the
original source of much of the Ed Code governing the Districts authorization and sale of bonds.
According to the Pleasanton Managing Partner for Vavrinek, Trine, Day & Company, LLP (VTD),
Terri Montgomery, there is almost nothing other than spending outside of the original bond
language, and spending on general fund (education) type activities.
The Districts bond language is written so broadly that almost anything spent on a District capital
asset could apply. She agreed that neither going against Board directives, spending outside of Board
authorizations, not informing the Board of spending, or breaking the law in program spending
would violate the Proposition 39 language.
From page 48:
Based on the result of our test, it appears that the District appears to be in compliance with
the requirements of Proposition 39 for Measure D (2010) and Measure (2012) bond funds.
To say that District spending is compliant with Proposition 39 is to say very little. It isnt nothing
because the District was put into State receivership in the 90s after using capital loans for general
education purposes.
Most of the observations in the draft audit seem to be equally broad, mostly asserting that the
District is not actively breaking the law. From three pages later:
Based on the review the District appears to be in compliance with the laws and regulations
in its handling of claims on bond funded construction projects.
Even though these two sections claim that the District has been effective in controlling these two
areas, the documents included in the 2015 Updates section would not support these conclusions.
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Check Register
All the schedules presented in this section are based on the AP Check List report that has been
presented at the last two CBOC meetings. The report used listed all checks for Fiscal 2014 for Funds
21 and 35, and is included in the electronic files as AP Check List by Check.pdf. A version that is
sorted and subtotaled by vendor is included as AP Check List by Vendor.pdf.
During the last fiscal year the District had problems with two major vendors affecting the Bond
Program. The first was CDW, and can be seen in the included payment reports. CDW is the principal
installer for the Districts WIFI installation program, as well as many of our other technology roll
outs. At one point in the year they told the District that they would not continue work because of
non-payment of past due invoices. The District did manage to pay them enough to have them
continue working on the technology projects.
The second vendor that the District has had problems with, again because of the Technology
Department, was AT&T. Without understanding the source of the conflict (my understanding is that
it was not related to bond projects), the District had to switch cell phone vendors, and AT&T has not
been as cooperative on construction projects.
From page 48 of the Agreed Upon Procedures
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Based on the result of our test, it appears that the District appears to be in compliance with
the requirements of Proposition 39 for Measure D (2010) and Measure (2012) bond funds.
In addition, the payments to the vendors and contractors appear timely.
Lance Jackson
Mr. Jackson is not only the former manager in charge of SGIs contract with District, and the SGIs
current Chief Operating Officer, he has continued billing the District for his time spent on the Bond
Program, and has an office at the Districts SGI location (1400 Marina Way South, Richmond)
jackson-gets-30000-mon.pdf
According to Oakland Unified, as Chief Operating Officer of Seville, Jackson is ultimately
responsible for the companys work in West Contra Costa. But the company is not
implicated in the investigation of mismanagement, and Jackson has not been involved for
five years in day-to-day oversight of construction in that district, according to OUSD.
WC-1001-1214049.pdf
SGI invoice for program management for December 2014, dated January 6, 2015. Lance Jackson is
billed for 35.2 hours.
WC-1001-12214049.pdf
SGI invoice for program management for January 2015, dated February 3, 2015. Lance Jackson is
billed for 30.4 hours.
SGI Offices.jpg
This is a picture of four of the five offices SGI uses at the 1400 Marina Way South building in
Richmond. The picture shows three offices (the first one on the left is mostly cur off), a conference
room, and a darkened office on the wall facing the camera.
Mr. Jacksons old office is the darkened room on the far wall, his current office is the middle one on
the left (below the exit sign, to the left of the clock).
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the same format as Primavera, the two project numbers are easy to read. They are 11601002-06
and 15001001-02.
Project Detail History Munis.pdf
This is a Munis report showing two Seismic projects created in two Measure 2005-M modernization
projects at Downer and Riverside elementary schools.
The project numbers in Munis need to translated to be readable (see the Project Number list in the
appendix). The two Munis numbers are 01002-11606 and 01001-15002. Munis also has an
unneeded string, 97455860, and a cost code, 324XSPC. The four segments are a cost string, which is
the only source of a project name in Munis. This problem is an artifact of how the system was set up
and can be corrected.
In addition, issues were noted regarding inaccurate information reported from the
Primavera system. It was reported that there were approximately 20 master projects
reported in the Munis system were not included in the Primavera system, the discrepancy is
approximately $6.5 million.
Unfortunately both the amount and the cause are in error. The Primavera reporting system
gets all project costs directly from the Munis project ledger. The $6.5 million error resides in
the Munis project ledger, along with an additional $1.2 in other errors.
Re_Audit Subcommittee.pdf
This is an email reply explaining the current project leger reconciliation, and a summary of what it
would take to fix the errors.
Project Ledger Summary Reconciliation 2014.pdf
This is a report on the Munis report server giving the Project Ledger reconciliation by either fiscal
year, or by program to date. This reconciliation was printed for the 2014 fiscal year.
Here you can see the four errors that cause the total $7.7 million reporting discrepancy: Amounts
posted to the G/L only, Project amounts not in Funds 21 and 35, project transactions posted to
Period 0 (year 0, period 0), and Unpaid amounts not included in Project Summary.
To report only a $6.5 million error VTD had to have ignored the second largest error group. The
$6.5 million error also is probably a result of how contractor retentions are paid or reported.
District management, to my knowledge, has not looked into it since it was reported to them in
January 2015.
Project Ledger Summary Reconciliation 2015.pdf
This is the same report for Fiscal 2015. As you can see there are more error types, and they are
larger. The errors large arise from not posting journal entries to the project ledger, problems with
payroll posting or setup, and contractor retentions.
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The Unposted project amounts and Prior year ending balances sections are not errors per se,
but are reconciling items in order to arrive at the Munis project ledger ending balances.
Project Ledger Summary Reconciliation Program to Date.pdf
Because the Bond Program, and subsequently the project ledger, is multi-year, the reporting errors
are cumulative. This report shows the reconciliation for combined fiscal year of 2014 and 2015, or
July 1, 2013 to present. The total combined errors are approximately $60 million.
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