Are School Boards Informed Enough to Make Security Choices

So let me let me ask the audience. Right? I'm pulling up your slide that you showed the school board. And you tell me, as an audience member, is this right? In in deep down, you know it's wrong. Okay? So I'm gonna compare to the the one that was awarded and then ASAP security. Now keep in mind the specification was written that you had to be a certified dealer You get preferential treatment, based upon if you are a local dealer vendor. Right? Yep. Are they local? So here we go. ASAP security is a certified dealer. Check the box. Utilizing local forces here in Houston, Texas. Check that box. Estimated time to complete the project was five hundred days. K? So a little over a year, a year and a half. They had the best reputation rating of the two. They've worked for this district for free, put together the bond numbers that And the grant. And the grant that got them the funds for this project without a single penny. Okay? Now we're gonna move on to the vendor who is selected. Not a certified dealer, which is what the specifications called for, which should have eliminated in the first place. Let's let's talk about that for just a second. It with with why does the certification matter? Right? In this particular case, this is the glue that holds all the systems together. And this particular manufacturer does not allow the customer to call in for tech support. You have to be a certified dealer with a certification number you went through factory training in order to get some. So who's gonna be the representative for the customer now? They're gonna be coming out of San Antonio. Well, that was my next deal, is that, again, keep in mind you get preferential treatment on the bid if you're a local vendor because we wanna keep things local. Right? What everybody always says. But you wanna be able to be serviced. Well, you exactly. Not only you wanna keep things local, but you want when you call, say, hey, I'll be there in thirty minutes. Rather than six hours or tomorrow or maybe next week. Right? So that's the second line item is that this individual company that was awarded the contract, he's already not certified dealer, was using a subcontractor out of San Antonio, Texas. Their estimated data completion was nine hundred and seventy nine days. K? Just quick math. That's, almost three years. K? Double the amount of time. And they have the worst reputation rating. So again, tell me how this happened. How did how did this happen? It it happened because they put so much of the preference on on price. So according to the consultant, who was on the defense when the school board is is Of course, he was because his his bottom line and his margin was going to be affected. Sure. So, according to him Well, I'm gonna say that company. Yeah. That alright. So according to this individual from the company, he's saying that the company who won was awarded a total of eighty seven points and the next closest vendor was was us, we were awarded sixty nine points. So, okay, you had fifty five Right? And then you had sixteen. Well, I didn't have fifty five because I didn't have the lowest price. Okay. So what's the fifty five? Okay. So what was your five point? Out of that fifty five, how many points did you get? Guess what? You don't know. Nobody knows. The district the school board members who are approving this, they don't see the scoring cards. Us as the vendors, we don't see the scoring cards. So here's another thing that is interesting about this specific one. So everything was bid electronically. And if you go into ion wave, there is an award letter for the entire project to our company for our full bid amount is a formal legal document that was in our portal that says that we won the project. How long before the board meeting did that come out, a month? Yeah. So when when the election when the shortlist was made, then that was approved right after that, we logged into our portal looked at it, and there was an award letter for the full amount. It's a legal award document. This is absolutely ridiculous, but this goes back to what I said is listen, just because, you know, having been an administrator and also a school board member Listen, I get it. You you wanna support the people who work for you and and their opinions. Right? Mhmm. But sometimes you have to intervene. Sure. Sometimes they they're not qualified to make these decisions. Hell, I can remember when I first got to the district that I worked at. Right? Right? We did a full assessment. You guys were involved in that assessment. One of the things that we discovered right away, you know, minor, but it would it it made no sense to me. Is we started looking at fire alarm panels because they were in disarray. We started looking at intrusion detection systems. Mhmm. Between the two, we had seven different systems. Seven. Seven. For eleven campuses. Well, in in seven Seven different systems. The problem with the, fire alarm specific systems that you guys had had your district before you got there. They were proprietary. They were proprietary, and they weren't even the same one. So, for any one company, to sign a service or a maintenance agreement, you would then have to work out an agreement with each individual company that services those brands. Yeah. Or worse yet, that's if you were ethical and did it correctly. Yeah. If you didn't, then you would go on to those proprietary systems without the proper training and knowledge and try to fix whatever problem is there. Without the training. And so because, you know, and I remember vividly you digging into with your CFO at the time. Yeah. And asking, right? Well, how does this happen? Who makes this decision? And what was the answer? Do you remember? Cause I do. I do. Well, why did how do you make the decision? You're the chief financial officer. But why did she pick those? Because of the lowest number. Lowest price. And so and that's that's what I'm telling you guys. Listen to me. You can't always go with lowest price. Well, in in the costing you guys more tons tons. Oh, but here's here's here's the harsh reality. Is this district, and they know who they are when they listen to this. They're gonna know, and I don't care. It's fine, you know, whatever. But at the end of the day, Yeah. You went with the lowest bidder. But what you don't understand is that that six million dollars in savings that you thought you had is gonna be consumed with change orders. No. We don't we don't evaluate change orders in this discussion. Absolutely. It's gonna be listen. The taxpayers of Texas City deserve to know, and I'll I'm gonna let the I'm gonna let the cat out of the bag right here. Well, We built three brand new schools from two thousand and in in nineteen to two thousand and twenty one or twenty two. Can't recall. Right? X amount of dollars during that bond that was passed May of twenty twenty, May of twenty eighteen was for construction and six point five million dollars, for security. Mhmm. I was I stayed within budget. Okay? You stayed within budget. I I stayed within budget. Right. Proven forensics audit proven. Okay. But what about the actual overall project? This is what the taxpayers of Texas City don't know. That they're about to find out. Uh-oh. Seventeen million dollars in change orders. You know why? Because they didn't think about the process, how it should have, how it should have played out. They didn't have the right people making the right decisions. And it cost the taxpayers an additional seventeen million dollars. And no one lost their job. No one knows about it. No one has been held accountable to this day. And so What other department came in under budget? You said we or came on budget or under budget? Other than you. None. Wait a minute. So you did what you were supposed to do fiscally responsibly. Yes. But nobody else did. No. So if I remember correctly, because I was a part of this. Yes. We scrimped and saved and did everything else because you were pushing the envelope. Right? You wanted to there was design changes in the school and and and things that we're doing that people haven't even ever thought of in schools. Yep. And we wanted to, and make sure that we had the right technology because we were doing it from the ground up right way. Right? And so in order to do that, man, we we we scrimped and saved everywhere. We possibly could. And you are just absolute drawing a line in the sand. I don't have it. I have this much money has been. We gotta figure it out. And we did. We did. And we made it work. Right? And the crazy thing is we've taken that same process. And I don't give a damn what anybody says. There's always naysayers. There's gonna be people who've heard this or heard that, heard that. Same people that heard that I overspent or, that I misappear operated funds from one account to the next account. And then guess what? And the fax came out the same individuals that were making the accusations then came to my defense and said, hold on a minute. We've been lied to this whole time by this administration. Here's the documents that prove that we've been lied to. We've requested the open records request. Matreg is the only one who stayed within budget and they still didn't believe it. So then we did a forensics audit, and the forensics audit said, yeah, Mike's the only one who came in at budget. In fact, he had a surplus of almost nine hundred thousand dollars when he left the district in October first twenty twenty. Where's that nine hundred thousand Oh, you got moved to construction. Oh, but why? Because there are seventeen million over? Because they were seventeen million over. And that nine hundred thousand Mhmm. That was all planned out. For security, phase two, that never happened. Which they're having to spend now to do for additional cost. For additional cost, but the budget was there. But it goes back to The decisions that you're making. Ask yourself. Are you qualified to make that decision? And the answer was the reason why we had seven different fire and and intrusion alarm systems is because the chief financial officer was making the decisions based upon price only not understanding that these systems have to integrate with your camera systems, with your mass note systems, with your the s SMS text messaging, email. All all of these things have to be integrated. That that the problem is is that the system is inherently broken. Right? So when I when I went to go speak at the board, I signed up. I got my three minutes. I had rehearsed it. I had I had a you know, slides prepared. I had a handout. I did everything I could to convey years worth of information. Probably start looking in in the here and and and strike a court. Then when it comes up for discussion, I have to sit in the audience, and I can't say anything. Right? But they will pull up IT director, consultant, even this the sense that they're their decision. And they get to talk. Yeah. And during that time, there were straight up lies. There were straight up lies told to the board. And I sit in the audience and I can't say a word Yep. In the process. Tell me how that's free. Even though it's incorrect. It's not fair. If if they would have just said, you know what, there's not enough information here for Let's table this. Let's table this. Let's have further conversation. That gives thirty days before the next board meeting to figure it out. Yeah. And, hey, this guy put together spiral bound presentation binders, a presentation came over here at at the the wee hours of this board meeting, worked his ass off, put together three minutes of passionate talk. He did everything he's right. He's he's invested so much time effort and energy, and he's raised a lot of questions. Maybe maybe we ought to, like, have a conversation with this guy. Maybe we ought to have a conversation with our team in detail to and convey. To do it. Too inconvenient. They're all working a full time job. They're doing this or the kindness of their heart. It's too inconvenient. We're gonna rely upon the expertise in the suggestion of our IT director and the consultant who we're paying who is, you know, worried about his bottom line and his margin and how it's gonna affect that margin, which is why he's advocating for a company that did not meet the specification, which is not a licensed dealer, have the worst reputation score So here's where somebody should be asking questions. Right? And this is why people don't say it. This consultant that was hired, whether it was an architect or engineer or whatever consultant He he only works on k twelve space. Right? So if I go and press this further, right? If I were to then now pro legally protest this spit because it did violate law in so many different ways. I I I I am I'm marked by this person. I'm gonna see them at every single solitary deal. And this person has that scale where he comes back in the rating. And whenever he's doing that on the next project, he's gonna put his in there. Peace security system. Poor reputation, whatever the case may be. So so many times people won't stand up and say anything. They won't do. They won't put together the presentation. They won't go for the three minutes. They won't put it up. And in my case, What did it get me? It's got me nothing. So if I were to take this to the next step, alright, which is the legally protest, well then I'm I'm blank ball from this case to somebody. You're gonna be And this is why this process is broken. Yeah. I mean, it's truly broken. And the reality is the school board members if they knew half, if they knew a third of the information that I know of how this went down, there's not a single one of them that would have voted yes. Not a single one of them, because I honestly believe that the school board members truly are trying to do the right thing. No. I They're just not informed. I do too. I agree with that one hundred percent. And and if you ask some of my friends that are still on the school board, Yes. I was a pain in the ass at times. I get it. You know, I was a pain in the ass, but I ask questions. You know, it I I've, you know, I got my book every Thursday or the Thursday before the meeting. I read the book to in its entirety from cover to finish, to the to the end. There was one or two other individuals that I knew and I could always count on that would read that because we would call each other individually prior to the meeting hey, did you see this? I wonder why this number is this way or why did they do this, this, this, I'm gonna ask about that. I'm gonna write a note about it. We're gonna open discussion. But then there are other individuals who are on the board that wouldn't read their book. You know? And I'm not here to to throw shade at any of them. What I'm telling you is that these school board members, a lot of the time, it's not their fault. Because they're only giving or they're only given certain information. Right? They can only attest to and ask the questions based upon the information that they're given. How many times when you were on the school board? Because you were so connected, you knew about events that happened at the school. Yeah. And then you would ask your fellow board members, did you hear about this? They didn't know anything about it. Know anything about it? No nothing about it. But they're making the decisions that aren't there. I mean, it it almost seems willful that a superintendent or school is district is keeping school board. No. They absolutely do. I will argue that with anyone all day of the week because what, you know, at least in our district, I would bring up issues that I was made aware. I mean, listen, I'm from there. Right? I grew up there. It's the whole reason that you stepped away from government retirement. I left my retirement. To go and do that cash. I have five years left. Yes. Because I want to make a change. Yeah. And I'm not here to toot my own horn, but my passion infuriated people. My my will to want to serve it still does. My will to wanna serve and to do the right thing and ask the right questions and and identify the the the vulnerabilities or the gaps in these things that would generate a question, that would just completely frustrate the hell out of people essentially saying, Mike, just why can't you just stop asking questions? You just go with what our recommendation is because at the end of the day, it is taxed payer dollars. We took an oath to be a steward of taxpayer dollars. And in a lot of ways, school superintendents. And listen, I'm not knocking school superintendents. It's a hell of a job. You guys have your hands full, especially in in today's society. But what I will tell you is you are not doing anyone any favors by trying to withhold information. You know, in so many times, school superintendents withhold information or maybe not intentionally. But what it what is it lying by omission? Alright. I mean, it's it's if you're not telling somebody what's going on, you're you're you're purposely withholding it. Right? And that's just a there's a lot of truth to that as well. Well, but the other thing is this is They solely rely upon the recommendation of their IT director or their maintenance and operations director. I'm gonna bring up another one. I mean, I know that you were you were, aware of. So this is a a district to the east. And, And so, just like we've seen, you know, why is this person qualified or not? And and and we've spoken up about there's there's a lot of predatory products that are, yeah, rolled out in our industry. Some of them that are extremely proprietary in nature And, when when the districts, purchase this technology and replace it across the entire district, they are they're literally locked. And and and it's so much so that the the acronym is started being called hostage as a service. Right? And that's that's what they're calling these products because once you buy the product, you are absolutely stuck. If that company goes out of business, you have to rip and replace everything. So in this case, this was a district that was spending, I don't know, fifteen, twenty million dollars on a product. It was proprietary. There was absolutely one hundred percent proprietary. And in this situation, the the bid was written, again, a certain way legally, and this IT director chose to go down a path that broke the law. Right? And they put that before the district. It was such a hot topic when that was first brought up that the school board didn't want anything to do. They kicked the can thirty days down the road until the next meeting. And this individual went up there and, in IT director and just absolutely fell on the sword. And and the thing was that was so important was that this is a large district. The selling feature that sold the school board was that they could work on it. They could install it themselves. They could they could do it themselves. It was a really large district. Right? I wonder how that's going for them. Well, what was funny about it, and I struck a nerve, right wrong or indifferent, it was valid at the time, but throughout the entire board meeting, the projectors were going out of sync. And they were having to stop the board meeting to wait for the projectors to catch up so that they could talk about or read it. And they were going over there and this particular IT directors over there are like jiggling handles and Can't fix the projector, but she's gonna make a recommendation on spending twenty million dollars of taxpayer dollars. Well, not only if she can't fix the projector, but now imagine if that was the camera looking at the door where an armed intruder came in or somebody was assaulted or somebody was kidnapped. This person can't keep the projectors running, but somehow they're going to handle the entire And in that, in that case, it wasn't even being installed and sold by a, an integrator It was a supply house. Mhmm. And then they were using unlicensed, un vetted individuals that they, like, found off a Craigslist list to go and install it. And when all of this was brought to light, they still approved it, and then they doubled down and paid another, like, four or five million dollars in licensing because it was gonna double if they didn't buy it. It's like, it's like calling out the, the the the cable cable provider. Can you come install this for me? Oh, yeah. We have technicians in your area. Yeah. You know, Jose shows up. In his nineteen ninety two, you know, Chevy Astrovan. You don't know if he's a licensed installer or not. Yeah. Right? But he's gonna go drill holes in your And I I might, you know, it could've been could've been John, could've been Matt. Could've been Betty. Could've been Betty. Yes. But but you don't know who they are. Well, it's like get the holidays. Right? You know? There's so much there's so many packages that are being shipped FedEx is having to outsource. Hey, you know, it's a big store. It's like some dude walks up to my up to my house, and it's just a random car. There's nothing that says FedEx, and he's dropping it back. Package. Yeah. Like, who are you? Where did you come from? Right. Right? And then in a year and a half from now, when that product fails and they've installed it themselves or they've used these shitty, you know, installation folks that they that they're flyby nights Where are they gonna be when they need help? What's interesting in this example, again, this is another example. Went through the school board. I had my in this case, it was two minutes. Didn't even have the the extra minute. So two minutes to speak. And we put together a bunch of things in there. These were these were news stories of where this product had been installed around the country where they were already being sued hadn't finished products or or or installations. Product was failing. Promises were never kept. Contractors that were, caught doing things working for this company, illegal practices within the corporation. Right? And so when we put it in there, the thing that I got back was, well, these were not credible news agencies that report on the Wall Street Journal was one of them. Wall Street Journal, IVPM. Yeah. You know, they're not credible. Yeah. They're not none of those were credible. Well, the first question that anybody should be asking him for this particular product is why is it that they have more sales sales people in the state of Texas alone than they have installers? Yeah, even if you said installing companies. Right? I mean, it's it's crazy. You have more salespeople in the state of Texas than you have certified installers of your product. One, I should tell you what the motivation was about the the money. The Wall Street Journal was that a superintendent got caught taking bribes that IT directors were receiving goods. Well, let's start talking about that. Yeah. Let's move over to that. So as a school board member, when we, you know, when we were going out for bids, and or for the bond. Right? We had multiple architect firms that would meet us at Tasa, TASB, whatever. We're going to these twelve hundred dollar per night, two thousand dollar per night, you know, steak dinners. You know, here's a and and I'm it felt wrong to me. It right? It is wrong. It it felt wrong to me that, you know, hey, you know, the superintendent sends out, hey, this week, we're going to TASatazbee. We're gonna be here x, y, and z dates. On this night, we're going with this architect. On that night, we're going with this architect or with this firm or whatever. And they're, you know, we're going to this steak house, you know. And we sit down and it's You know, we we all eat a nice dinner and, it just seemed it seemed It just didn't seem right to me. Because when I when I was at the government, if we ever took anything that was more than two hundred and fifty dollars, We had to we had to report it. We had to report it. Right. Right? And and yes, we sign those things with when we become elected that, hey, if you receive, I can't remember the dollar amount honestly. Sure. If you receive more than x amount of, you know, benefit from defender or whatever, services. Yes. You have to report it. I know that our dinners cost more than what that dollar number was. Maybe not individually, but as a group. Right. Nobody reported that. Yeah. And maybe you don't have to. And I I get that. And I I I understand that. Right? Yeah. So I mean, but there's other things. I mean, I I can tell you another example when when I, I acquired a, a company in South Texas, and they're, single largest client at the time, wanted to meet with me. Right? And, And so I thought that was kinda weird. Like, I'm trying to wrap my arms around this, and he's really, really pestering for a meeting, wants to meet, wants to meet, wants to meet. I'm like, alright. Well, look, this is the biggest client. Let's let's go meet. And so, you know, I'm I'm I'm getting from the team like, you know, hey, what's going on? What could this possibly be? And it's like, well, we're We have a renewal of our contract coming up, and so he probably just wants to talk about that. And, so I was like, oh, okay. So I go I go to the meeting and, he he asks one of the, to set the salesperson to leave the room, to specifically leave the room with me and him. Right? So, already, you know, my my spidey senses are way up. Right? I, you know, sometimes, you know, red flags are going off here. And so, he slides across the desk, a bass pro catalog, and he's got a boat circled. Right? And this is a really, really large, it was a school district, really, really large school district, and this guy was head of facilities. And he was there to talk about how he made the decision on who would win the contract. And he slid that catalog over and just kept tapping on it over and over again. And I I could do I, you know, you you, you know me. I mean, obviously, I'm I'm pretty direct. And, I just busted out laughing, you know? And I'm like, look, Ben, if you're looking for me to buy you a boat in order to win this contract, you can save your breath right now. Yeah. Like, it's never going to happen. Like, I I I'm not gonna ever do this. I'm not gonna ever cross that line. And here's what's crazy. We were at this time. You talked about those proprietary fire alarms. Right? So at this company, they required They were the single sole vendor in that entire region. Region of state. I mean, I'm talking region, very large region. That was an authorized dealer. This school district had all of their file alarm systems standardized on this brand of system. The next closest provider is a six hour drive away, right? One way. Okay. They paid for that provider door to door. For every service call for the district. Six hours. At a spike because I wouldn't buy that guy. But This purchasing stuff that we're talking about is real. Like, I mean, we're just breaking off the sky. This is a fresh wound. But this is happening every day. You know, to get back to, you know, I mean, even and that happens, man. I mean, that does the thing that people don't understand is, I mean, we're we're trying to we're trying to run ethical businesses, right, where we establish. No. We're not trying. We are. Well, I are. I mean, we are running ethical businesses where we you know, what we say, we're gonna do we do. Right? A handshake is just as good as a contract, but I quickly learned Mhmm. That that is not the case. That people On the other end. Your That's what I'm saying on my end. Yep. It's it's just as good. Yeah. But on the other end, it's not reciprocated. It's gone. Those days are gone. Oh, they're absolutely gone. And so now I don't I mean, I'm not I'm not doing anything for free anymore, within reason, and I'm not doing anything without a contract anymore. You know, and it's it's sad that it's it's come to that, you know, or some type of agreement because we've been taken advantage of so many times. You know, at the end of the day, I have a family to feed just like you have a family to feed and service only goes so far. Yep. Right? And, you know, the the bad thing is is that, you know, when I said earlier about, you know, going out to dinner, I get it. There's certain level of of gamesmanship that has to be involved. I I certainly understand that. But at the end of the day, when those school board members or with these individuals that are making these decisions in the upwards, you know, of double digit millions, sometimes triple digit millions of dollars on who to award a contract to. Instead of remembering the steak dinner that someone treated you to, You should probably look at all of the numbers and ask questions as to why. Like, for example, what what just There is no way in hell as a school board member that if I saw a forty percent discrepancy in price on one vendor out of four and the other three were within eight percent There's no way that I wouldn't have asked why. I wanted to know why and my follow-up question would have been okay. You quoted as low so that you could win the bid. K. Secondarily, how much additional money is this going to cost? Because I I just like in that seventeen million dollars at Texas City ISD, that they went over budget on construction. It was all in change orders because it wasn't planned well because people didn't ask the right questions. Right? And at the end of the day, that is taxpayer dollars that we have to be responsible for. And You know, I hope that you do take legal action. I hope that you join with the other two integrators who have been slighted in this process. And and I really am, going to utilize my resources with our legislators to try to change this process because it's it's not right. There's so much. That that's processed. It's process is fault. I think that I think that if legislators knew the way that the law was written and how it's being applied and that when there is something wrong, the method to bring that up. Right? If if if you only get three minutes, and there's no other medium, no other form for you to convey your message. You gotta understand, like, we're we're reaching out well in advance of the school board meeting. I mean, we tried. We collectively between the other three, you know, I now know that we all three tried to reach out to the consultant. And all three tried to reach out to the school, and all of those calls went unanswered. It's just that I took a whole another step in my process and documented it. Right. Right. I mean, we we we tech we use technology and we documented those calls There is absolutely no way that they can refute that we call these calls or returnings.