Most people think that the new copiers at the Mineral County School District were some planned occurrence. That is not the case. The copiers prove that both the staff and Board is incompetent. Yet again, the taxpayer was bamboozled out of money and staff lost out on resources.

The reason that new copiers were brought in is because a person in IT took it upon themselves to obligate the school district to them. A normal person would know that when a leasing company calls and offers to allow an early trade in that a shenanigan is afoot. Not these people.

First off, the package changed from where got a certain amount of copies free monthly to paying for every single page that it spits out. The former Superintendent even made a comment in a board meeting that it made a cute sound and told people the number of pages. It never occurred to them that the cute sound should really be a cash register sound because the company makes money on every single page.

I tried to take this issue to the board, but in their usual marionette puppet theatre fashion, they were too lazy to even read the contract before approving it. The former District Attorney was also apparently too lazy to read the few pages as well. Instead, they approved the lease based on the fact the former superintendent said in the meeting that the copiers were “unlimited free pages”.

My calculation showed a minimum of $50,000 over 5 years more than the prior contract. My error here was thinking a board of puppets were capable of doing what is in the best interest of the students and staff. I would hate to see the traps they fall into if they don’t even have enough brain power to compare to similar contracts and see what is different.

The worst part of the new copiers is they are even less reliable then the old one. They consistently jam more, streak pages, fail to email, and hold substantially less paper. The old copiers held two reams of paper each side at the bottom, the current one holds about 1.25 per side leaving papers blowing in the wind or awkwardly scattered.

I am also certain the reason that no action was brought against the classified staff that obligated the school to obscene contract because Hope Blinco was in the same union as them. I am no expert, but signing a $100,000+ contract when policy is zero authority should be a problem. It was fortunate for the person that actually signed the contract that Blinco had their back with her unethical ways to maintain union membership.