A couple of weeks ago we heard about the west side pool project being delayed because of under-funding.
The quality of life bonds that we passed allocated $8 million to the pool and now the architects are telling us that the cost will be in excess of $13 million.
Word on the street is that many of the quality of life projects were underfunded. The story is that our former city manager did not engage construction professionals in the estimating process. She and her colleagues evidently decided how much everything should cost. A five million dollar miss on an eight million dollar project sounds like something that our former chief financial officer could have come up with.
Then city council gave us a potential answer to the problem when they voted not to put restrooms in San Jacinto Plaza.
Should we build the west side pool without restrooms?
After all …
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Just install a few “please don’t pee in the pool” signs. Problem solved.
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Or go use the bathrooms at the diploma mill baseball stadium. After all, the stadium was built for we the people according to the young Hunt.
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That type of guesstimating is part of the problem when people like the former city manager and her pals anticipate receiving hundreds of millions of our dollars to spend as they see fit. I can hear them now: “A million here…a few million there…don’t sweat the details. it will all balance out. People won’t even remember what we promised. Plus, we won’t be around, so why worry about it?”
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or “Don’t worry we are above the law, taxpayers cannot hold us accountable for our actions”
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There was very little staff work done to guide the CC reps on how to allocate the bond money, a failure of the CFO and CM’s role. I was at a meeting where this was discussed and it was a free for all.
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Just make it half as deep…
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Why don’t they eliminate the splash pad and all the extras that the designers / contractors added on? How much closer to the estimated cost could we come? We voted for a pool, not water entertainment.
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