Buffalo's Joint Schools Construction Board is involved in an escalating fight over how much profit LP Ciminelli made in managing the 11-year old project. Nearly $1.5 billion was spent in updating Buffalo schools.
Before Carl Paladino was elected to the school board and then appointed to the JSCB, no one really paid much attention to overall costs and profits.
The project manager is fighting release of the records and teams of lawyers on both sides are fighting with blasts of legal papers.
Paladino said it appears Ciminelli made a lot of money on Phase Five of the project.
"When you add up these numbers, 106 from 147, which would be the net, which was their original schedule of values at $147 million, there's $41 million missing and then they're telling us, well, no one ever defined our profit, what our profit should be," said Paladino.
Paladino said the profit should be around three percent and the Ciminelli profit appears much higher. The firm did release some records; those were found stacked in an unheated warehouse near Broadway and Bailey.
The contractor has repeatedly defended its work and its profit. No Ciminelli representatives were at Monday's JSCB meeting.
