Board votes 6-1 to pay $95,000+ for JHS gym seat changes

It was a mistake, C. J. Huff said.

Everybody makes mistakes, he added.

Then he told the Joplin R-8 Board of Education that the mistake in not getting the right colors for seats in the new Joplin High School gymnasium was made by the design team.

The mistake will cost the taxpayers more than $95,000, the cost for replacing the wrong-colored seats. The board approved that cost by a 6-1 vote with Debbie Fort casting the dissenting vote.

That vote followed a convoluted explanation by Huff over how he would fix it so it did not end up costing the district anywhere near that much.

"I'll try to walk you through this," Huff said, as if he were talking to a group of kindergarten students who did not understand high finance as well as he does.

Huff said some of the seats would be placed in the high school's third gymnasium and others would go to elementary school saferooms. And even better, he said, other school districts, including Carthage and one in Arkansas, were clamoring to buy the seats, which would further cut the costs.

How much can be made that way is uncertain, Huff said. "Until the check's in the bank, it's hard to say."

Fort asked several questions about the expenditure, asking Chief Financial Officer Paul Barr about where the money would come from. When Barr said it would come from the capital outlay fund, Fort asked if this was part of the $45 million the district borrowed a couple of months ago.

Barr said it was.

"Was that included in the money that we borrowed?" Fort asked.

Barr said it was not.