the denver post B denverpost.com B wednesday, december 21, 2011
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NEENAN:
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Company “nothing but forthright and honest” School roof at risk
FROM 1A
plans to use the room during the holiday break. Boian said Neenan notified the school after an independent structural review determined that the engineer on the project, Gary Howell, had not designed the beam to the proper building load. “Gary Howell was responsible for this,” Boian said. “It was a miscalculation by Gary Howell.” Boian added that the district’s contract is with Neenan and that the company is ultimately responsible for the work. Asked to respond, Howell wrote in an e-mail Tuesday that he had not been informed about the Sargent situation and would like to review the calculation about the beam before commenting. Howell also was Neenan’s structural engineer on the Meeker elementary school, which was closed this year after it was found to be built to the wrong safety codes and in danger of collapse in severe weather. Neenan initially stood behind Howell. But the company fired him last month after learning the state Department of
NEWS «15A
The roof over the P.E. and wrestling room at Sargent Junior-Senior High School, northeast of Monte Vista, is at risk of collapse. Repairs to the school, built in 2010 by the Neenan Co., should be complete by the time students return in next month. 17
CENTER 285
160
MOSCA
ALAMOSA
COUNTY Sargent Junior-Senior High School
MONTE VISTA RIO GRANDE COUNTY
10 miles
HOOPER
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ALAMOSA 285 The Denver Post
Regulatory Agencies had previously reprimanded him for letting his license lapse — and that it was launching an investigation based on a Denver Post report on Howell’s work in Meeker. As of late Tuesday afternoon, Howell had not replied to a DORA letter requesting a response, and he has until today to do so, said Angie Kinnaird Linn, a DORA program
director. She said she’s confident the state board that licenses engineers will look closely at all the school projects Howell has worked on. The Sargent school opened in the fall of 2010. It was financed through a $17.6 million grant from the state’s Building Excellent Schools Today program and $5 million from a district bond issue — a pool of money that also upgraded an elementary school. Neenan is paying for outside reviews of the engineering on 15 schools that received $150 million in BEST money at the request of the state Department of Education. The Sargent review, conducted by Jirsa Hedrick & Associates of Denver, is not complete, officials said. However, Compton and Boian said it has determined that the load bearing on the beam in question should have been 30 pounds per square foot but was built to 8 pounds per square foot. When Compton asked Neenan what that meant, the company told him the section of the roof as constructed could handle only about 10 to 12 inches of snow, he said. Earlier this month, classes in the district were canceled
when a blizzard dumped 8 to 10 inches of snow on the area, Compton said. But he said the building showed no signs of stress. Also, the roof is metal, sloped and south-facing, so it doesn’t accumulate large amounts of snow, Compton said. A check Monday found no more than a half-inch of snow on the roof above the wrestling room, he said. Boian, the spokesman for Neenan, said the company will send crews to clear snow off the roof if a big snowstorm hits before repairs are carried out. In an average season, about 30 inches of snow falls at a weather station 2 miles west of Monte Vista, according to the National Weather Service. Large snowstorms occasionally sweep across the valley, however. Last January, months before the new school opened, one storm dumped 12.7 inches at the station. “Was there an element of risk?” Compton said. “Sure, there was.” Compton said the problem is limited to the roof above the second-floor wrestling room, which also hosts P.E. , aerobics and yoga classes.
“This is all unfortunate, what has occurred,” Compton said. “I also have to compliment Neenan and how they’ve handled this. No one that runs a corporation wants this to happen, and it did, and they have been nothing but forthright and honest. I know some would say, ‘Well, they’d better because they messed up.’ ” The Sargent school district draws students from San Luis Valley farms as well as the towns of Monte Vista and Alamosa, where parents can opt for a rural school choice. School-board president Will Hathaway, a potato-andCoors-barley farmer, said the
new school “is a very nice facility” compared with the almost century-old building it replaced. But, he said, “you have to be disappointed when it wasn’t quite up to what you were led to believe it would be.” “It’s all very concerning,” he said. Eric Gorski: 303-954-1971 or egorski@denverpost.com or twitter.com/egorski David Olinger: 303-954-1498, dolinger@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dolingerDP
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Reinforcement planned for Mapleton school A new addition to a Mapleton Public School will be reinforced over the winter break, the result of an outside review by a structural engineer. An 8-inch plate will be added to better protect one section of the newly dedicated York International School against lateral forces such as earthquakes and high winds, said Paul Wember, the district’s owner’s representative on the project. The work will be done before students occupy the new
GUILTY:
addition after winter break, officials said. Wember and a representative of the Neenan Co., which designed and built the school, updated school-board members at a working dinner Monday night. Minor work on the foundation — to address a “modest” bend in a beam — will take place next summer. Superintendent Charlotte Cianco termed the additional work “reinforcements” rather
than repairs. She said that although the issue is considered minor, “I still think it’s important because we want to deliver the building we promised to our community.” By next month, the district expects results of another Neenan-financed review of major construction on its Skyview campus, where two new buildings will house four schools. The district received $34 million from the state’s Building
Grenades had expired
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FROM 1A
Before pleading guilty, Turner tried to get the case against him thrown out for selective prosecution, arguing in a motion that it was common for officers on the elite Special Operations Response Team on which Turner served to take training flash-bang grenades home with them. “Many SORT officers treated these materials as personal property, taking the items with them when they left prison grounds,” the motion stated. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Barrett agreed that other officers may have taken stun grenades, calling the prison’s munitions controls “very lax.” “It wasn’t a good inventory” system, Barrett said. Turner, when pressed by Chief U.S. District Court Judge Wiley Daniel on why he had taken the grenades, said the thefts came during a difficult time in his life. “I wish I had a good answer to that,” Turner told Daniel. “I was going through a crisis in my life. It doesn’t make it OK. I was dealing with a drug addiction. I’m sorry for it.” He declined to comment after the hearing. Turner began working at the Bureau of Prisons in 2008.
Court records describe him as a member of SORT at the Florence Federal Correctional Complex with access to the armory at Supermax — renowned as the most secure prison in America and home to scores of high-profile inmates. SORT is the prison equivalent of police SWAT units, and its officers are called in to break up prison riots or perform other dangerous tasks. Team members use flash-bang grenades — which produce a bright burst of light and a loud boom — to create a distraction that buys them time to act. According to the search-warrant affidavit, written by a Cañon City police detective, the stolen flash-bangs were past their expiration date and had been designated for training purposes. After that, prison officials said, the munitions stopped being tracked. The investigation began a year ago when police received a tip that a man in Florence was bragging about having a flashbang. Police followed the trail from that man back through two other men to Turner. Police also interviewed Turner’s former girlfriend, a Florence police dispatcher, who said Turner traded ammunition packaged in white boxes for drugs, according to the affi-
davit. The prison’s ammunition also is packaged in white boxes, the affidavit notes. Turner’s ex-girlfriend also told police she believed Turner and his roommate grew marijuana and that she had once overheard them talking about using police uniforms to commit a burglary, the affidavit states. Turner admitted Tuesday to having been addicted to Vicodin, which he said he was initially prescribed after he was injured at work. He admitted to selling one flash-bang for $100. When Daniel asked Turner whether it was worth it, Turner said no. “I wish I would have thought about it,” he said. Turner will be sentenced in March, and prosecutors are expected to ask for a reduced sentence because of Turner’s cooperation in the prosecution of a co-defendant — William Warren, who is accused of helping Turner sell a flash-bang. Barrett, the prosecutor, said Turner also has helped in other investigations. “He has made us aware of other criminal activity of which he was aware when he was doing what he was doing,” Barrett said. John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
W I K I L EA K S CA SE
Hacker tells court why he turned in soldier By The New York Times
fort meade, md.» The government’s case against Pfc. Bradley Manning came to a dramatic close Tuesday, when the computer hacker who turned him in to authorities took the stand at Manning’s court-martial hearing to explain his role in the probe. The hacker, Adrian Lamo, revealed at one point that he was simultaneously trading computer messages with Manning while sharing that information
with the authorities. Lamo said he began exchanging instant messages and e-mails with Manning in May 2010 and decided to alert authorities right away because the soldier made claims of “acts so egregious, it required that response.” Manning, a 24-year-old former Army intelligence analyst, stands accused of the most significant leak of government secrets since the Pentagon Papers. He allegedly funneled tens of thousands of dip-
lomatic cables and intelligence reports to the WikiLeaks website, which shared them with news organizations and ignited international outrage. The defense attacked Lamo for betraying a troubled soldier who had gone to him for moral support. Lamo told Manning that he should consider him as a “minister or a journalist,” adding that their chats would be treated as “a confession or an interview, never to be published.”
Excellent Schools Today grant program for that project — the largest in the program’s history. Eric Gorski, The Denver Post
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