Just as a side note here, Rochester also voted in Cenergistic's, with the board doing no research, before voting, and even though I tried to get it tabled, The Majority of the board voted to sign the contract unseen 10-2.
http://www.examiner.com/article/why-didn-t-the-windham-school-board-research-cenergistic
January 12, 2014
Kimberly Morin
Why didn't the Windham School Board
get the facts first?
As reported earlier today, the
Windham School
Board pushed through an over $500,000 proposal with a company called
Cenergistic. This company was formerly Energy Education Incorporated and
changed their name within the past couple of years. According to Cenergistic’s
own website, they have 3 other school districts as clients in New Hampshire:
Claremont, Londonderry and Nashua. Unfortunately there’s a slight problem.
Cenergistic is not registered to do business in New Hampshire.
According to the NH Secretary
of State’s site “All companies doing business in New Hampshire must register
with the Secretary of State's Corporation Division.” A search on their
website for Cenergistic or even Energy Education Incorporated brought up no
such registered company. A call put into the NH SOS’s office had the same
results. How is it that a company such as Cenergistic is doing business with
public school districts isn’t legally registered to do business in the state of
New Hampshire?
This is on top of the other
information that has been discovered about Cenergistic in which school
officials in other states have been found to receive kickbacks from the
company. Apparently Bob Williams of Lakeland, Florida received
over $70,000 from Energy Education Inc. (now Cenergistic). Another
school official resigned after
recommending Cenergistic (when still doing business as Energy Education Inc.)
without bothering to notify the school board that she had actually consulted
for the company.
Clearly there are some ethical
violations and issues within Cenergistic itself but the Windham School Board
wasn’t given a chance to research and review any of these potential issues.
They also weren’t given the chance to review why some school districts dumped
Cenergistic. Did the superintendent, Winfried Feneberg or the business
administrator, Adam Steel know about these potential issues? If so, why weren’t
they brought up to the school board? If not, why didn’t they do their due
diligence?
On top of that the
Massachusetts Inspector General wrote an advisory to school districts to not
execute contracts with this company until they fully understand the contractual
obligations as Ken Eyring pointed out in his letter to the editor in the Windham
Independent:
That advisory refers to EEI and includes the
following:
“Before paying a vendor hundreds of thousands
of dollars, this Office strongly recommends that school districts determine if
some energy savings can be achieved through other forms of education or energy
conservation measures.”
“Although EEI claims that its program is
unique, energy conservation and management service options exist in abundance”.
“This Office recommends that awarding
authorities not execute contracts until they fully understand the basis of the
service fee being charged and should be able to tie the fee to a measurable
product deliverable.”
Other school districts have
ended their contracts with Cenergistic after finding they didn’t really
understand how the energy
savings were tracked and that the savings were mostly eaten up
by the costs associated with the program. In Milford, CT Energy Education had
the school board create an $80,000 a year position for “changing school
system employees attitudes about energy consumption.” At least the school
board in that town actually
questioned the program and weren’t forced to vote on it after only
48 hours of review. In Hamburg, NY, the school Superintendent there pushed
through Energy Education Inc. without any other bids. As soon as the
superintendent retired, the school board ended
the expensive program.
Remember, the school board was
given only 48 hours’ notice of Cenergistic’s $577,000 proposal. When it was
suggested by board member Ken Eyring that the board have more time to research,
he was ignored. When resident and facilities committee member Tom Murray spoke
up, the police were called. Clearly there are some serious issues with
Cenergistic both in the present, they aren’t legally registered to do business
in New Hampshire according to the NH SOS and in their recent past as Energy
Education Incorporated. There are ethical issues as well as legal issues on top
of true cost vs benefit issues. Why again was this ‘no bid’ proposal and
contract pushed through so quickly? It’s a question Windham residents should
demand be answered.
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