Ackerman Audit Resolution Fails

Our last meeting on Dec. 15 was covered in several newspaper articles because of revelations that the cost of the Ackerman Sports Complex is higher than staff had previously told the Board and that numerous change orders were approved by staff without the required board approval. We also learned that much of the work done in the change orders was for items that were supposed to be in the original bid documents.

In response to these admissions, I called for a forensic audit of the ASC project. This motion was voted down 4-3, with Commissioners Minogue, Hess, Dallman and Aubrey voting against.

There are two reasons that I believe an audit is necessary. The first is to get a complete reporting of ASC costs so that the Board can properly budget for the upcoming year. Staff repeatedly under-reported the total facility cost by at least $740,000 and at the same time told the Board that the project was within budget. The Board approved $220,000 in fitness equipment in September with the understanding that funding was coming from unspent contingency fund money- when in fact the contingency fund had already been wiped out. The Board voted to purchase that equipment based on faulty financial information.

The second reason is to determine whether we can recoup costs for errors and omissions. The Glen Ellyn Park District hired an architect and construction management company to prepare the ASC bid documents for us. If the mistakes in the bid documents were due to negligence we should make every attempt to recover the costs of these change orders.

The anticipated total expenditure for ASC is now $11.2 million. This included $800,000 in change orders that were largely unreported to the Board and $130,000 on interior furnishings that were not bid, budgeted for or approved by the Board.

I will continue to ask questions about this project until we have a complete accounting of the project. In order to move forward we need to complete ASC and ensure its profitability, learn where we stand financially, and recover any costs that we can.