By Adam Kramer
The School Construction Authority’s cost overruns, which killed the planned construction of 19 borough schools, might have been adverted if the SCA had used yearly budget plans instead of a five-year plan, City Comptroller William Thompson said.
Thompson, who met with reporters from the city’s community newspapers Monday, said determining construction costs for the five-year period left the agency open for overruns due to the yearly change in construction costs.
He said the Board of Education “got blamed” for the overruns and the problems at the SCA when, in fact, the Board of Ed had little control over the agency and “was not involved in the contractors’ contracts.”
Queens, which has the most overcrowded schools in the city, is more than 25,000 seats short. Before it was revealed that the School Construction Authority had a $2.3-billion budget gap last year, the borough was scheduled to get 19 schools and now far fewer are slated to be built on a delayed basis.
The agency, he said, should be abolished or put under the mayor’s control. Now with Mayor Michael Bloomberg taking over the city school system, the SCA “will be centralized in one place,” he said.
With mayoral control of the city education system, Thompson said, Bloomberg will oversee all the facilities involved in construction.
“The SCA threw money at the problems,” Thompson said of the SCA’s flawed attempt to build schools.
