No Bidding on Belmont Costs?

Los Angeles, CA—According to Dominic Shambra, former Director of Planning and Development for the Los Angeles Unified School District, there was no competitive bidding for the Belmont Learning Center contract. “It was a request for proposal and it wasn’t one that asked for a bid.”  In this Part 1 of a 2  part interview, Shambra told Emmy Award winning FULL DISCLOSURE host Leslie Dutton about his role. “I was one of five on the committee that recommended (the developer/contractor) to the Board of Education.”  “My responsibility was to coordinate for the District those activities which were done by lawyers, the business people.” And, in response to his battles with the oversight committee members, Shambra said he wore a railroad engineer’s cap to one meeting because they said I was railroading this whole project.  We were very strong and we were very aggressive and we stood up for what we believed.”

This Part 1 of the Full Disclosure interview with Dominic Shambra is set to air worldwide on the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week starting Thursday, July 29nd on the PROGRAM page at http://www.fulldisclosure.net/ for the first 30 days the program will be provided to viewers FREE as a public service, an available thereafter online in the program catalog.  The program will also be featured on 40 cable systems throughout California for the next six months.  

 
Full Disclosure host Leslie Dutton has been conducting a series of interviews with local prosecutors and investigators involved in the Belmont Learning Center investigations.  The series is entitled “BELMONT: The World's Most Expensive High School".  Costs to date for the development are $175 million, which was financed in 1997 with non-voter approved, tax-exempt bonds known as Certificates of Participation (COP's).  The Los Angeles Unified School Board has already approved an additional $110 million for remediation of environmental hazards on the Belmont campus, which was built on top of 1,000 closed oil wells and is plagued with methane gas and hydrogen sulfide. On Tuesday, June 22, 2004 the LAUSD board approved the project’s environmental impact report, paving the way for completion of the stymied project.

This program and other Belmont programs can be viewed at http://www.fulldisclosure.net/ via video streaming on demand.   A cable channel guide with airtimes is available on the website.
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