To the taxpayers of this wonderful town, I’d like to point out that my home is in Scarborough.

The Scarborough High School construction project is beyond a doubt one of the strangest experiences of my 40 years in the construction field. Even now, after I have been off the project for over 11 months I have not walked away from it. I was employed by Harriman Associates, the design team for the project as determined by the American Institute of Architects format. Job responsibilities were to ensure construction of the project was done according to documents, attendance of all meetings, keep daily records of construction activities and to report anything incorrectly constructed to the design team. Seems all pretty straightforward, right?

I worked on the project for 13 months and prepared and submitted 287 daily reports for the 287 days I was on the project. I took 3,748 digital photographs, of which I e-mailed 1,051 to the design team with explanations as to where it was and what was wrong. Do the math, 1,051 photos in 287 days, the e-mails went between the design team, Norman Justice and Pizzagalli Construction as each problem was discussed. Why is everyone saying that all is hunky-dory? I have a question, where are all these e-mails now? Are they not public record and should they not all be available to any Scarborough taxpayer? By my reckoning these e-mails with photos attached and all of the discussion as to lack of quality or concern for the project as stated by many people are on the hard drives of at least 11 different computers in four different buildings from Scarborough to Auburn.

Who is Kevin Freeman of Pizzagalli? I ask this as I never met the man in all of the meetings I attended during all the decision making of all the managers and yet he speaks to this newspaper as if we have met and he knows something of me.

Norman Justice says many things about me that make me smile. It’s like watching a “B” rated movie with a bad script. He said to this paper last week that I wasn’t a good communicator… OK, that is just too funny, ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you otherwise … even my ex-wife.

He also claimed that I was telling the design team structural engineer that he was wrong. Just the facts, I sat in a meeting where the design team was concerned enough to come down in force from Auburn to meet and discuss the 27 front-to-back, full-height cracks through the foundation wall on line A. I observed Pizzagalli managers answering questions in what I consider to be a less than forthcoming manner. My point to the structural engineer was simply that he should look at the missing evidence before making a decision. He chose not to look at the records that I had.

One more thing about Norman Justice. On a fine Wednesday afternoon, just before 1:00 p.m. he had a meeting with all of his staff in the new cafeteria in the High School. Several employees who were offended by that meeting contacted me and told me he said he would fire them if they spoke to anyone concerning anything about the construction that they had seen. I’m an American, I’m a veteran, anyone else care about our FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Where you from Norm? Oh yeah, Gorham, and you don’t pay taxes in Scarborough.

Harriman Associates said that they did not keep records of that wall. Sure they did, minutes of the meeting I just mentioned and the photos and e-mails that I sent them were and are in fact official records of the construction.

The day that my manager Ken Rand, the construction manager for Harriman Associates, came to my office at the high school and fired me, I asked him why? He said he couldn’t be sure. Then as I walked out the door Ken said, “Why couldn’t you just let things lie, why didn’t you just let things go?”

What might I do next? My employer has invited me to their South Boston office for a party and I’m going to take a detour over to C & C Engineers and drop off some information that they might have use of.

I have not made a statement concerning the construction of the high school that I am unable to back up with photos, and I will continue to do so.

Bruce Brown

Scarborough