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county administrator, as chief executive officer of a county, were ruled exempt from required disclosure. The exemption for the county administrator, however, has no application to official records of the board of supervisors, which records are required to be disclosed under that opinion. If the supervisors can’t qualify as chief executive officers, how does a superintendent of schools?
As to adversely affecting the financial interests of the school board, the architect who presented the report emphasized repeatedly that it didn't contain cost estimates on construction but only a budget analysis for planning purposes. The dollar figures included were national averages for building a similar structure, he explained, with those averages adjusted to reflect local costs for materials and labor, in this case using “hard data” from Culpeper County.
Cost Projections Important
If a rough estimate on the price tag for construction will compromise a bidding process months later, the school board better inform the supervisors. After all. Rappahannock's }. governing body has over the years freely released projections on cost; for a new clerk's office, for renovation work \ in the old clerk’s office building and the courthouse and most recently for remodeling the jail to meet state standards. Maybe the supervisors realize that a contractor is not going to spend hours thumbing through back issues of the Rappahannock News when a project is put out on bids looking for the original ball park estimates on cost. Maybe the supervisors realize that a contractor in arriving at a bid works with two fixed items—his price for labor and materials—and then adjusts his profit margin on down from IS percent, depending on how bad he wants the job.
And what’s changed since 1976 when the Committee to Study Space Needs at Rappahannock County High School chaired by the same Beverly Massie who now chairs the school board estimated that construction to ease overcrowding at the high school would cost around $266,800 for a cafeteria, kitchen and library expansion, alterations to the central and guidance offices, four classrooms and two toilets? What's changed since March of 1979 when the school board’s special capital outlay committee unveiled a proposal for expansion at the high school and the elementary school and construction of a new central office and bus shop, the total package estimated to cost $1.4 million?
But whatever the justification given for refusal to release the architect’s report and the report on an indexed salary scale, the public’s right to know how public business is being conducted is at stake here.
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