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Local School Board Fills
Vacant Member Position
By Jamie Dougher
Assistant City Editor
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of
Education swore in anew member at its
Aug. 15 meeting, a long-time education
advocate that members say will help the
school board achieve its goals for the
coming year.
The board interviewed eight applicants
for the position and ultimately elected Ed
Secrest to replace Teresa Williams, who
vacated the board to relocate to Charlotte.
Chairwoman Valerie Foushee said the
school board chose Secrest because he
was a qualified candidate who worked
with the community. “He has an extensive
background with tutoring, he worked with
young children, and he was active in his
community and in his church,” she said.
Secrest was the chairman of the
School Governance Council at Seawell
Elementary in Chapel Hill last year, and
board member Maryanne Rosenman
said that is how he will contribute. “The
SGC is concerned with the governance
of a school, and we’re concerned with
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the governance of a district,” she said.
Minority student achievement is a
major task the school board will address
next year, and Rosenman said Secrest is
concerned about the issue. “He has vol
unteer experience as a mentor for
minority families,” she said, referring to
Secrest’s experience mentoring intercity
students in the Philadelphia area.
Secrest said he has plans to enhance
minority student achievement next year,
such as tutoring and after-school pro
grams. “It all comes back to implement
ing the plan and making the plan real
for teachers and students,” he said.
School board member Nick Didow
nominated Secrest first. All six board
members subsequendy voted for
Secrest, which eliminated the need for
any further nominations.
“I’m excited. I’m going to work hard
to try and make things happen,” Secrest
said. “I want to contribute to being a
positive influence in the school system.”
The City Editor can be reached
at citydesk@unc.edu.
Audit Analyzes Hospital Budget
By Jeff Silver
Assistant University Editor
UNC Hospital officials are evaluating
an audit of the construction of UNO’s
Women’s and Children’s Hospitals that
examined why the' project is both over
budget and overdue.
According to an audit conducted this
summer, the project is expected to
exceed its original budget by more than
$25 million, or 18 percent.
PwC Consulting, a business of
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, released
the audit report to School of Medicine
Dean Jeffrey Houpt on July 15.
When the project was proposed in
1995, officials filed a certificate of need -
an estimate of total cost - for $140.2 mil
lion. The final projection estimates a bud
get of $165.6 million, the report states.
Construction of the hospitals is also
behind schedule. Initially, officials
planned a November 1999 opening. But
the second and final phase will not be
done until February 2003, officials say.
Phase one ended in February 2002.
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The report outlines five areas that
comprised most of the cost overrun:
construction, consultation, equipment,
financing and the contingency.
Construction and consultation both
cost more than expected because of a
multitude of unforeseen charges.
Financing cost overruns resulted
because UNC Hospitals pursued a larg
er bond purchase than originally
planned and because of unforeseen cap
ital interest expenses from the building
delay. But the audit states, “these inter
est expenses would have been paid by
the Hospital in any event.”
Though equipment costs were actually
more than SIOO,OOO less than projected,
PwC cited the area because the cost doc
umentation for equipment expenditures
was “incomplete and decentralized.”
But Karen McCall, vice president of
public affairs for UNC Hospitals, con
tested this assertion, saying the project
did have an equipment budget.
The audit states the University needs
to bring in more professionals to evalu
ate project plans before construction
begins. It also calls for comprehensive
policies in managing large projects and
a standardized accounting system.
McCall said UNC Hospitals plans on
following many of these guidelines for
future large-scale projects.
But she said an essential problem with
the hospitals project was the use of multi
prime contracting, or contracting parts of
the project individually. Officials say
multi-prime contracting, mandated by
state law for state institutions when the
project began, leads to cost ineffectiveness,
as opposed to single-prime, which allows
hiring one contractor to handle the work
The N.C. General Assembly passed a
law in December that frees state agencies
from the multi-prime mandate.
She said officials will apply the
lessons learned from this project to
future undertakings. “(The auditors)
came out of it saying we were under
resourced to this magnitude of a project
with everything else going on.”
The University Editor can be reached
at udesk@unc.edu.
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
Doctoring the Budget
Construction of the UNC Women's and Children's
Hospitals is over budget and behind schedule. The
project went $25.4 million over budget, although
only $8 million was originally budgeted for
unforseen costs.
• December 1999: original planned opening
• June 2000: revised planned opening
• February 2002: actual opening for Phase 1
• December 2002: expected completion of Phase 2
| 1995 Estimated budget in millions
H 2002 Forecasted budget in millions
H Total Change
Land
-mammm
Financing
Consultants
so HBMIEg
Equipment
IS 4 £H
Construction
Total
DTH/COBIEDELSCIN
SOURCE: PWC CONSULTING
11B