Gibson HS Delays cost VUSD taxpayers 45 million dollars

THE HISTORY OF GIBSON'S OBSTRUCTIONISM THAT COST VUSD TAXPAYERS BETWEEN 45 AND 55 MILLION DOLLARS

Gibson has done nearly everything he can do to prevent, delay and increase the cost of VUSD's new third high school.

First in spring and summer of 2002, he refused to be the necessary fourth vote to allow the purchase of the MUCH CHEAPER, LEVEL, one million dollar Kawano site behind Strawberry Hill. (Eminent domain votes take four out of five school board members to vote in favor. The three rationals were in favor Gibson and Guffanti opposed)

GIBSON'S TEN THOUSAND CAR MEGA HIGH SCHOOL CAMPAIGN

Then he saw a political opportunity and took campaign cash from those who opposed the one million dollar Kawano site. He ran a political campaign in the fall of 2002 with huge signs warning against the "ten thousand car mega high school". He profited politically while he cost VUSD taxpayers millions.

GIBSON REPEATEDLY REFUSED TO BE THE NECESSARY FOURTH VOTE TO OBTAIN CHEAPEST AND BEST SITE FOR NEW DUAL MAGNET HIGH SCHOOL

He repeatedly refused to be the necessary fourth vote to acquire the Kawano property. The NCTimes quotes him at least six times occasions, months apart, refusing to support the CHEAP LEVEL Kawano site.
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/guffanti-group-repeats-hs-deception.html

Or read them yourself directly from the North County Times archives.

STORY ONE
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2002/10/30/export21822.txt
Two VUSD candidates attack magnet high school site
Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Incumbent school board Trustee Jim Gibson and the candidate he endorses ---- Steve Bradford ---- said this week that they oppose putting the campus, which would accommodate two magnet high schools, on the property the district is studying on East Vista Way between Mason Road and Osborne Street in an area called Strawberry Hill.
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STORY TWO
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2003/02/16/export3600.txt
New Vista high school project picking up steam
Saturday, February 15, 2003

In the latter case, the district board of trustees would be faced with a difficult decision. Two of the five members ---- Jim Gibson and Stephen Guffanti ---- have said they oppose putting the school on the Kawano property (Strawberry Hill).------------------------------------------

STORY THREE
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2003/08/10/news/inland/vista/8_10_0323_00_12.txt
Vista still searching for home of magnet high schools
August 9, 2003

Three board members say they wanted to build the high schools on a 50-acre tract known as Strawberry Hills in Bonsall. But the other two members said they want the district to put more effort into looking at smaller sites around the city.The board couldn't agree on the Strawberry Hills site…Board members Jim Gibson and Stephen Guffanti said they refuse to support condemning the Kawano property (strawberry hill)------------------------

STORY FOUR
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/05/29/news/inland/vista/22_38_385_28_05.txt
VUSD sees Melrose campus as key project
Saturday, May 28, 2005 10:48 PM PDT

The long road Vail said the district seriously considered three other sites before settling on the Melrose property. Those sites included property south of Highway 76 off East Vista Way that didn't work out for environmental reasons; the "Kawano" or "Strawberry Hill" property that failed to generate enough support among school board trustees; and the Lincoln Middle School/Vista City Hall site that fell through because the state wouldn't provide necessary funding.
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STORY FIVE
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2003/03/23/export6438.txt
School district exploring new high school campus proposal
...there are very few properties left big enough to accommodate a high-school campus serving around 2,000 students. District trustees voted 5-0 on March 13 to abandon the most recent possibility, a produce farm (Kawano property aka Strawberry Hill) on East Vista Way in the unincorporated area just north of Vista. The proposal encountered opposition from neighbors and the property owner was unwilling to sell. Two of the board trustees objected to the site (Guffanti and Gibson), which would have left the five-member board short of the four votes needed to institute an eminent domain proceeding that would be needed to obtain the property.
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Story Six
School board drops rural site for new high school
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2003/03/14/export5702.txt
...Kawano himself said he was unwilling to sell his property. Also, a couple board members(Gibson and Guffanti) had said they opposed the district pursuing the Kawano property. For the district to go forward with an eminent domain proceeding to forcibly acquire the property would have required four votes on the five-member board.

FINALLY THE THREE REASONABLE BOARD MEMBERS GIVE UP ON CHEAP KAWANO SITE


In March of 2003, the rest of the board gave up trying to reason with the unreasonable Gibson and voted to look at a new site. After four more years of search to find the cheapest site large enough to build the new high school, they decided on the current site at Melrose and Highway 76.

OTHER SITES CONSIDERED, FOUR MORE YEARS OF DELAYS

The other sites that were considered were:

(1) The Lincoln Middle School combined with the Vista City Hall site was considered at the insistence of Jim Gibson but the site was too small (LMS 17 acres, city hall acreage even smaller)together the two site were far less than the fifty or sixty acres needed for a new HS.

The state of California must approve a site. The state rejected the LMS site.

There were other problems besides the smallness of the two sites.
(A) A bridge over the VERY busy Escondido Ave would have been needed to link the two sites. (B) Rancho Minerva Middle School was not yet built and there was no middle school for the Lincoln Middle School students to attend.
(C)The too small Lincoln site would have required two story (or more) school buildings built on unstable river valley sediments. Since the Long Beach earthquake in 1932 that collapsed so many schools, the schools in California have virtually all been built as one story spread out campuses as a precaution against building collapse. (Google "Field Act" to find out more)

(2) Another site looked at was the Stacco site. It had environmental and grading problems which would have required very expensive environmental remediation and a wild life corridor running through the center of the site (school).

(3) The site across from Guajome Regional Park where North Coast Church is currently building their new church and school. That site has two huge natural gas pipelines running underneath. The state refused to allow a public school to be built on this site with the gas pipelines underneath. Re-locating the pipelines would have been prohibitively expensive.

The only site left in the district large enough for a high school was the legally entangled and hilly Melrose/Highway 76 site.

GIBSON'S BUDDIES SUDDENLY RE-ZONE SITE, COSTING VUSD MILLIONS MORE

During negotiations for purchase of this site (which is located in the one third of our district inside the city of Oceanside), Gibson's political buddies on the Oceanside City council voted to change the zoning of this site from agricultural to residential which raised the value and cost of purchase of the site by about ten or eleven million dollars.

Less than two years later these same Gibson Oceanside City Council buddies publicly endorsed him for a run for their city council (last November).
http://www.electgibson.com/index.htm

I guess that is because he NEVER asked his buddies not to re-zone the property. Had Gibson asked them, their THREE votes would have stopped the re-zoning and saved the school district that he pretended to represent MILLIONS of dollars. An approximately seven (7) million dollar site became a eighteen (18) million dollar site. Thanks Jim for doing your job, NOT!

NOTE: Eighteen (18) million dollars for the purchase of the land is the figure given in the most recent North County Times article.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/04/30/news/coastal/vista/z7f4e67662eb58ec6882575a50077c5e1.txt
COLLUSION AND GIBSON CAMPAIGN FINANCE IRREGULARITIES

Then during Gibson's 2006 VUSD school board campaign, Gibson went back to his old tricks of taking developer money to benefit himself while costing the taxpayers of VUSD even more.

In September 2006, five thousand dollars of outside housing developer money was given to his political ally and the then board member, Stephen Guffanti who was NOT running for school board as Guffanti’s term of office had two more years to go. Guffanti turned around and gave that EXACT same amount to Gibson's 2006 school board campaign benefiting Gibson who was in a very hotly contested campaign at the time.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/02/06/news/inland/2_04_282_5_07.txt

Why do you suppose Guffanti gave the exact same amount to Gibson as he had received from the developer?

HOW WOULD THE 2006 SCHOOL BOARD CAMPAIGN COME OUT IF GIBSON HAD BEEN TRANSPARENT CAMPAIGN FINANCING?

Gibson apparently did not want to be caught taking OUTSIDER developer money again. This convenient campaign transaction was not known until months AFTER the election. I wonder if this would be called a VIOLATION of CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWS?

I guess we will never know how Gibson’s 2006 campaign for VUSD school board would have come out if the taxpayers of VUSD had known the interesting coincidence that $5000 was given to Guffanti who was not running in the election and that Guffanti would then give the exact same amount to Gibson. Too bad Gibson did not see the need to inform the taxpayers.

Because Guffanti was not running in that election, there was no requirement for Guffanti to acknowledge the money and no way for the average taxpayer to know that Guffanti appeared to be moving outside developer money through his campaign into Gibson's.

However Guffanti wrote a Community Forum for the North County Times in October of 2006 in which he bragged about giving Gibson more than"half" of his campaign funds which then stood at just over 10,000 dollars. Guffanti said, "This election, I did something that few politicians ever do. I donated more than half of my campaign funds to another politician's campaign." He said he did it, "Because I want board members who will support our children learning to read English" as though any board member elected to any school board in the United States wouldn't have that goal. Which board members didn't want our VUSD children to read English? Another ridiculous Guffanti statement on its face but also disingenuous. Was it also part of a deliberate attempt to obscure where the $5000 came from originally? Who knows? I report. You decide.

Read Guffanti's forum piece here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/10/23/opinion/commentary/102206140413.txt

Had Gibson allowed the taxpayers of VUSD to purchase the CHEAP LEVEL Kawano site in 2002, the third high school would have been built and opened for the 2005 school year at a cost of between 50 and 60 million dollars. There would have been no lawsuits, no zoning changes by Oceanside as the Kawano site was not in Oceanside. There would have been no need to spend tens of millions more for site preparation and land leveling as the Kawano site was level and graded.

LET'S ADD UP WHAT GIBSON COST VUSD TAXPAYERS

Let's add up what Gibson cost the taxpayers of VUSD. Eighteen million dollars to purchase the land at the second site (instead of ONE million), many millions more for site preparation due to hilly terrain at the second site, ten-eleven million more when his buddies on the Oceanside City Council suddenly re-zoned the land, increased costs of labor and materials caused by the four years of delays,. What would have been a fifty to sixty million dollar high school at the Kawano site will now cost at least 105 million. And the costs are still rising.

The total cost of Gibson's delays has been somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 -55 million dollars!

Not to mention the cost to our VUSD students left in two over crowded high schools for at least four years longer than they needed to be.

GIBSON IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GREATEST WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY IN THE HISTORY OF VUSD.

Gibson is also responsible for keeping our kids in crowded schools YEARS longer than they needed to be.

WHY DOESN'T GIBSON CARE ABOUT OUR VUSD KIDS AND TAXPAYERS?

Why doesn't Gibson care that he wastes taxpayer money?
(1)Neither his children or his supporters children ever attended VUSD schools. It cost him nothing personally or politically to oppose school construction.
(2) He profited politically with thousands of campaign dollars while costing the taxpayers of VUSD millions.
(3)His VUSD board position provided him a platform to run for higher political office. Twice he has tried to get on the Oceanside City Council (once to fill a vacancy)and once he has run for a California State Assembly seat.

GIBSON USES HIS VUSD BOARD POSITION TO RUN FOR HIGHER OFFICE

He used our VUSD board as a kind of political "street cred" to boost his chances for higher office.

Gibson is the only school board member on the VUSD board that has never been supported by custodians, school secretaries, cafeteria workers, teachers, parents or administrators of VUSD.

Given his abysmal record of mismanagement and waste of taxpayer money while on our board, it should be obvious why we do not support Gibson and look forward to a time when he is not on our board any more.