Demographic Study - Board of Mythomania

Just a follow up to the Demographic Study Board President Gene Maeroff referred to in his December 20, 2012 From the Desk of.. - which you can see here. As I indicated, after reading 'my-take' Maeroff's view of the Board of Mythomania, sure was curious to know what we spent the money on, what they asked to be done, who did they ask, who actually bid, who responded, what did the report say and how much did it cost - you know, silly things they never tell you about but should.

Given that their crystal ball was broken and they felt the need to have someone else tell us we're short of space, by how much and where - was this really necessary to spend money on this kind of thing? Think not! 

Clearly, they must think that this gives them ammunition for the next Bloated Bond Referendum a-go-go over there on Mythomania Lane. Oh wait..they do! The vendor actually says in the proposal that "We pledge our resources and state-of-the-art technologies to preparation of an easily understood and graphically rich report which will stand the scrutiny of 'pre-referendum'."

Now, don't get me wrong, I looked at the report and it's quite detailed and has a lot of information in it that all residents of the township should read. I would encourage everyone to go through their report. It has an executive summary, covers a background of all schools in the township, the demographics, housing, their methodology, enrollment projections, capacities by school and has an appendix of enrollment projection worksheets (though what I saw was just an index of the worksheets - didn't see any of the actual worksheets).

So, here's what I saw. There were no specs, no bids and no contract - just a proposal from the selected vendor. The proposal (see below) lays out what was requested by the board - and you should read that and see where the board was coming from with this study. For the basic and requested additional services, the fee was $20,900, of which I saw documentation for some $16,000 of that amount being paid so far.

Here's the proposal:

Here's the cover of the report and the table of contents:

Anyone who wants the report, just drop me a note. You're welcome to it. It's well worth a read, whether they use it to support the next Bond Referendum or not.