Breaking News: Council Staff Recommends Council Ignore Opposition to Project, Ignore Known Field Disinegration, Ignore Funding Issues

The memorandum for the County Council's Education Committee meeting on Monday, July 28, 2014, has just been released.

This part of the packet discusses the proposal to install artificial turf at Churchill High School in Potomac.

Note the following in the memo written by the Council's staff:

• Council staff recommends that the project be APPROVED despite the fact that there was NO community support for the project at the public hearing.

• Council staff mistakenly informs the Council "The full amount of the Board's request is $1.3 million for the total amount of the project."  We know that isn't a true statement because on Monday the Board of Education will approve the expenditure of an additional $49,840 for the Churchill project. 

• Council staff recommends that the project be approved despite the fact that there is an active bid protest in litigation.  The staff member tells the Council., "The Council should not step into the role of arbiter of the merits of this protest."  Even though the memo clearly states that the project is not slated to be done until "next August."  What's the rush? Why try to bully the Council into approving something that is over a year away? A few weeks would hurt what?

• Council staff mistakenly asserts that MCPS has to wait to put out a Request for Proposal for infill. How so? An artificial turf field requires 120 tons of infill. That's not going to change based on the construction of the field. Why the wait? 

• First, Council staff tells the Council they should APPROVE the process and not interfere.  Then, in the second section of the memo staff tells the Council to interfere by requiring a review of the infill bids.  Which is it? What's going on? Is this being set up so that FieldTurf will once again get the project and only later will it be revealed they won't use the alternate infill material?

Walter Johnson HS  2014
shredding artificial turf fibers

• Finally, on page 4 Council staff COVERS for the KNOWN disintegration of the MCPS artificial turf fields. Yes, we understand that MCPS has not reported that the Walter Johnson artificial turf field is disintegrating. That doesn't mean it isn't happening. FieldTurf knows why fields are disintegrating, that's why they sued their supplier!

Is this memo written with the best interest of the public in mind or the best interest of some other interest? 

  20140728_ED2 Churchill Artificial Turf by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland