Salaries Raise Eyebrows at School Construction and Maintenance Bureau’s First Budget Hearing

Leadership from the School Construction and Maintenance Bureau endured their first budget hearing before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday, 10 months after taking over the responsibility of building and maintaining the territory’s public schools from the V.I. Education Department.

Lawmakers spent much of the hearing grilling testifiers over the high salaries attached to management positions and relatively low number of “boots on the ground” employees after Sen. Novelle Francis Jr., who chairs the committee, noted that the bureau appeared “top-heavy.”

“You are top-heavy,” Sen. Carla Joseph agreed. “You are top-heavy and you need to reconsider how you’re spending the government money and the taxpayers’ money.”

Joseph listed a series of high-paying but apparently vacant positions at the bureau before concluding with a listing for a chief engineer budgeted at $13,180. She asked if that number was correct. The bureau’s chief financial officer, Charmaine Mayers, said the list Joseph referenced was out-of-date and may have been presented to the V.I. Management and Budget Office when the bureau first came online.

“This is the information that was provided to our post auditor,” Joseph said. “I’m only reading from what our post auditor received from the executive branch, so if you want us to have discussions, let us have discussions on real and pertinent information that is validated.”

Mayers stressed that the information Joseph referenced didn’t come from her or BSCM.

“This list has been exhausted, because we don’t have any vacant positions outside of the procurement officer,” she said. “All of the positions currently filled.”