Statement
of Terry Maynard, Co-Chair
Reston
20/20 Committee re
The
StoneTurn Group Tetra Report and Follow-up
March 20,
2017
Good evening. I am
Terry Maynard, 2217 Wakerobin Lane, and I am speaking on behalf of the Reston
20/20 Committee.
First, I would like to thank StoneTurn Group and its
investigative team for its excellent report prepared in far too brief a
time. It does exactly what you, Deidre,
promised it would do: It lays out a
clear forensic description of what happened during the unfolding Tetra
debacle. Regrettably, from our
perspective, it does not lay out specifically the who, why, and how of the many
events it identifies.
The members of Reston Association deserve to know all the
details in this shameful episode, including those reported by StoneTurn Group and
others that are not covered in this report.
We need to know, first, because somewhere between our Board and RA staff
and its contractors, including counsel, RA spent $2.65 million of our money on
a property worth less than half that in 2015.
Moreover, in 2016, RA spent nearly one million dollars repairing and
renovating the property without any budget or identifiable Board approval until
some $600,000 had been spent. The total
spending was nearly quadruple the quarter-million dollar forecast estimate in
referendum documents.
These are colossal errors. We must know in depth how and why they occurred and who caused them to occur. Then we must take steps to prevent these blunders from being repeated, and to discourage anyone from ever making them in the future.
Our preliminary report, which used the StoneTurn results
extensively, highlights several major areas of mishandling of Tetra’s purchase
and repair. As the many questions it
raises suggest, it is meant to stimulate further investigation.
In contrast to numerous mistakes StoneTurn Group documents,
neither StoneTurn Group nor we have been able to identify a single attempt by
RA or the Board actually to lay out a price offer, formal or informal, to Tetra’s
owner for less than his asking price of $2.7 million. To the contrary, we have an e-mail from the
RA land use attorney’s office to the CEO attempting to justify the seller’s
$2.7 million price. Maybe such an offer
document exists, but it hasn’t surfaced yet.
If it doesn’t, that’s a monumental failure of RA Board, staff, and
counsel fiduciary responsibility.
Similar unexplained and highly questionable events occurred
throughout last year’s period of renovation, but I think we have made the
point: There is much more to know and do
before closing this ugly chapter in Reston’s history.
What all this points to is the need for a follow-up
investigation to understand fully all that occurred and to make appropriate
corrective recommendations. The core purposes
of that investigation would be to identify specifically what mistakes,
accidental or malicious, were made, identify who was culpable for those
mistakes, and recommend to the Board appropriate corrective policy, process,
and personnel actions.
We propose that the next RA Board of Directors appoint a
special committee of RA residents with an extensive period to work and
extensive authority to access RA documents and personnel to pursue this
investigation. Heaven knows, this
community has the expertise to conduct such an effort. In the end, the community is the aggrieved
party in this fiasco, stuck with a white elephant, millions in debt for
decades, and the near certainty that facility revenues will never cover costs. Moreover, by using community resources, we
have the opportunity to avoid yet another major expense related to this
shameful episode.
That said, we appreciate that this Board, the majority of
which served throughout the purchase and renovation of Tetra, is not planning
to take action on StoneTurn Group’s recommendations. Moreover, as the CEO rightly pointed out in
last week’s Board Governance Committee meeting, RA’s specific ideas on how to
address process and procedural matters need to be refined. We think that a further indepth investigation
will help shape those ideas much more effectively and accomplish much more for
the betterment of Reston.
