APS Scrounges For More Couch-Change While Everyone Waits

We all know that the End of Year Snowstorm '06 (trademark pending) was a "perfect storm", a once-in-a lifetime event. So it shouldn't be surprising that APS is proving unprepared for the ice, roof leaks and general mayhem the storm has caused.

Still, you gotta wonder about the District's "snowy day" budget when APS Maintenance & Operations (the legendary "M&O" in APS parlance) Manager reveals in an ABQJournal story this morning that

"Ice has been the biggest problem, he said, and APS has set aside $200,000 to pay for removing it. But he anticipates more problems after everything melts. "There will be many, many pot holes," he said. APS has $100,000 set aside for asphalt repairs, he said. Roofs will likely leak, too. Several classrooms have flooded at Marie Hughes Elementary on the West Side, Dufay said."

A little check this morning shows APS consists of 131 schools (not including charters). As a home owner who is gonna have to have a roof job done when all this snow & moisture is finally gone, I'm looking at probably $4,000 to get my roof fixed. One roof. On an average sized house.

Meanwhile, to reiterate, APS has 131 schools, with huge, sprawling roofs, large parking lots and asphalt in Joni Mitchell "Big Yellow Taxi" abundance. And you're telling me they have a total of $300,000 set aside for ice removal and asphalt repair? And no mention of a roof repair budget? For the whole District?

(btw, it helps if you read the last paragraph with a rising level of indignation as you go, culminating in a red-faced, increasingly squeaky voice)

Simple division shows that to be just over $2,000 a school. I haven't more thoroughly crunched the numbers, but just eyeballing it...I can see how some can half-seriously guesstimate APS might not start back up until mid-February at this rate.

I don't fall into this way of thinking because we've already reached a tipping point for parents and kids (teachers too, in truth) where Polonium-210 could be found throughout District schools and we'd gladly go back to our radioactive classrooms. Hell, that's what we have Nurses' Offices for, anyway. A band-aid and a ten-point memo on "how to wash our hands" and we'd have that Polonium thing licked (so to speak), no problem.



Apologia: For those who aren't now involved and don't remember "The Nurses' Office" in public schools, I apologize for the rising number of Nurses' Office mentions in this blog. But they are such a font of bureaucratically-infused hilarity & Nurse Ratchet-style pill dispensation that I can't help myself. I really just need to do a whole post about them and get it out of my system, but for now I'll just snipe at random.