It's not an "either/or" situation. The fact that they worked together means they had more of a relationship than just "met at a bar last week."
It only proves they should have known each other - It doesn't prove any close association or motivation to conspire to do anything. This is akin to saying you would be willing to commit violations at your job for anyone who worked there... purely because you worked together for a brief amount of time. The fact they both worked together for just a month is not a strong connection to suggest motivation to do this. To point out they ride in another circle with far more close associations, with a proven history of helping each other, for far longer, is a far stronger link between the named parties.
because it is now apparent that the new Board is willing to hook up their pals with no-bid contracts at the taxpayers' (but mostly Disney’s) expense.
And unless it were shown to be illegal, it's not really much more than mud slinging and not court worthy. "shady dealings" suck, but if they are legal, you can only file it under "politicans suck"
They gave no indication that they asked other companies about a possible timeline at all. When Figgers backed out of the deal and Board members commented, there was no claim to having completed any sort of search to see who could do it best/fastest. Either they did a search and didn't find it worth mentioning (which raises the question of why they don't want to share that information) or they didn't do a search at all and immediately went with their pal.
You can't conclude what they did or did not do from their simple statement on why they picked figgler. There simply isn't the words there to make the jumps you are making. With the conditions under which they are operating, they didn't have to do said search. You are drawing conclusions about their words based on what you think they should have done - vs what they actually said.
And who created that perception? The same Board members who railed against alleged corruption with the old RCID setup (and provided no examples). Suddenly they say they need to change their 911 system and it is just pure coincidence that they sought no bids, chose the firm of their pal who worked with Gilzean and was appointedby the same guy who appointed them, and canceled their next Board meeting when word got out about the contract. Silly me for questioning this.
I'm all for saying it stinks and deserves scrutiny. What I'm not for is filling the fact gaps with things simply because they've demonstrated they are political minions.. and assuming we should be granted the power to make up our own because they are proven to be bad people.
Stick to what we actually know. We know their claimed reasoning, we know the district policy governing this type of deal, we know the trigger for the work is real, we know the district admin and the board are suckups, we also know the district employees are professionals and not drop-in minions.
We also know the board wouldn't have had to address the topic at all in the meeting that was canceled - it's not a open Q&A. Maybe someone would have commented, and they could have just said "thank you for your comments" and just ignored them. The board members or district admin can be confronted or contacted by reporters anywhere - not just the board meeting. Cancelling the meeting does nothing to shield the district from this matter.... and nothing was on the agenda to advance the deal in question either. So the board meeting is more "it looks fishy" then it actually has any meat to say it's related.
