A gold-plated plumbing caper
The order submitted in January to Miami's Bond Plumbing Supply Inc. seemed fit for King Louis XIV: a custom-made sunken bathtub, a sink with 24-karat gold-plated faucets, pastel blue toi lets, a "harvest gold" bidet with chrome-plated trim, even a portable Jacuzzi. But when Carol Cherrey, office manager and taxpayer, saw the name on the $8,934 or der, she said she "blew my stack." The deluxe fixtures were ostensibly ordered for a vocational instruction class at MacArthur South High School. Yet MacArthur, a school for 235 troubled youths, had no plumbing class.
Cherrey angrily called the school board's purchasing...