Nearly $2 Million Worth of TUSD Fixed Assets Missing in One Year
by David Safier
(TASL) It’s amazing what you can learn when you attend an open meeting of a TUSD committee. Thursday I was the sole observer at the Tucson School Board’s Audit Committee meeting. Here’s what I found out:
• About $2 million in Fixed Assets — items whose value is somewhere between $500-1000 or higher — went missing from various sites — read, schools — around the district last year.
• The number of items missing varied wildly from school to school. One high school reported something like 500 of these high value items were missing. Another high school reported 6.
• For the past 17 years, this issue has not been looked at carefully by the District. The losses have been reported, then basically filed away.
• It’s unclear where the buck stopped, so to speak. The inventory lists came in to Asset Management, but whether A.M. sat on them, or whether they were reported to higher authorities and nothing was done, cannot be known unless the District looks into the matter.
The losses were discussed in the outside District Management Audit which was finished earlier this year and got a lot of press for getting the figures on the savings for school closures completely wrong. The Fixed Asset Management section begins on page 3-59. The missing items were mainly electronics stuff — computers, cameras, camcorders, projectors, etc. — though one Gator Tractor, 4×2, valued at $5,228, was listed.
According to the Audit Committee, the total value of the District’s fixed assets items is about $74 million, which means we’re talking about something in the order of a 2.5% loss. I don’t know how that ranks, whether it is high or low for school districts in general. But I do know if there are huge discrepancies between the number of items lost at different schools, that should immediately send up a red flag, and someone should figure out what’s going on. Maybe there’s a good reason why some schools appear to lose more items than others, but ignoring the problem won’t answer the troubling questions.
The TUSD Board meets today, Friday, to review the outside audit at 3:30pm in the Badger Room, Tucson Magnet High School, 400 S. Second Ave. The Audit Committee said it plans to submit a report about these fixed assets issues to the Board, but I don’t know if the report will be in the Board’s hands or if that item is on the agenda.
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Nissan is the first auto manufacturer to say it will sell mass market, all-electric vehicles worldwide. “Nissan is upping the ante tremendously. They are the first to put it on the line and say we’re going to have an all-electric vehicle for a certain market by a certain date,” said John O’Dell, senior editor at the auto Web site GreenCarAdvisor.com.
As reported in the New York Times on Tuesday Nissan Plans Electric Car in U.S. by ’10 – New York Times:
By BILL VLASIC
DETROIT — The Nissan Motor Company plans to sell an electric car in the United States and Japan by 2010, raising the stakes in the race to develop environmentally friendly vehicles.
The commitment — expected to be announced Tuesday by Nissan’s chief executive, Carlos Ghosn — will be the first by a major automaker to bring a zero-emission vehicle to the American market. Nissan also expects to sell a lineup of electric vehicles globally by 2012.
In an interview Monday, Mr. Ghosn said Nissan decided to accelerate development of battery-powered vehicles because of high gasoline prices and environmental concerns, not just because of the need to meet stricter fuel-economy standards.
“What we are seeing is that the shifts coming from the markets are more powerful than what regulators are doing,” he said.
Mr. Ghosn said Nissan envisioned a broad range of electric vehicles, starting with small cars, and adding: “It’s not only about a small city car or a small minivan. It can also be about a small commercial vehicle and a small crossover.”
Mr. Ghosn was not always enthusiastic about alternative-fuel technology. In a 2005 speech to the National Automobile Dealers Association, he called gas-electric hybrids “niche products” useful only to meet strict fuel-economy and emission standards in states like California.
“It wasn’t long ago that Carlos Ghosn was a big naysayer about the role of electric vehicles,” said John O’Dell, senior editor at the auto Web site GreenCarAdvisor.com. “Obviously, something has opened his eyes.”
Other automakers like Mitsubishi Motors and Fuji Heavy Industries are testing versions of electric cars, and General Motors and Toyota are working on battery-powered vehicles that have small gasoline engines for recharging. G.M. plans to start producing the Chevrolet Volt in 2010, while Toyota expects to offer a similar, so-called “plug-in” hybrid around the same time.
But Nissan, which a decade ago was on the brink of bankruptcy, is the first manufacturer to say it will sell mass market, all-electric vehicles worldwide. The zero emissions refers to those from the car’s tailpipe and not those from the production of electricity used to power the car.
Still, Mr. O’Dell said: “Nissan is upping the ante tremendously. They are the first to put it on the line and say we’re going to have an all-electric vehicle for a certain market by a certain date.”
(Article continues below the fold)
