Skirting the law

April 22, 2016

The city’s prior contract to lease unmarked police vehicles was approved by city council December 22, 2015.

Even though the contract was for $250,000 it was not bid.

Why?

The police and purchasing departments used this ruse:

policepublichealth

Section 252.022 of the Texas local government code exempts purchases from bidding requirements if certain reasons.  Subsection (a)(2) reads:  “a procurement necessary to preserve or protect the public health or safety of the municipality’s residents;”.

Baloney

Where are we when even our police department games the system?

The contract awarded this week was sent out to bid yet they circumvented the process on the earlier contract.  It seems to me that if leasing unmarked vehicles was some kind of public emergency last time it would be one this time.

These people should be ashamed.

Using their logic they could probably avoid bidding most of what the city needs under the ruse that the procurement would protect public health or safety.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

3 Comments | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
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Open but not for use

April 21, 2016

brutuseye

Well San Jacinto Plaza finally reopened.

Aren’t we lucky that our city representative promised to keep an eye on the project?  With her able supervision the project only took two and a quarter years.  I can’t imagine how long we would have had to wait if she had not been overseeing the project for us.

Not really open

I’m told that the upcoming two day Neon Desert Music Festival will not be allowed to use the Plaza.

I don’t know the reason but suspect it has something to do with the fact that there are no restrooms in the Plaza after the remodeling.  They probably don’t want the kids relieving themselves on the alligator.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

5 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Unmarked police vehicles

April 19, 2016

This one is a surprise, even to me.

Item 15.2 on the Tuesday, April 19, 2016 city council agenda reads:

Discussion and action on the award of Solicitation No. 2016-513 Lease of Unmarked Police Vehicles to Acme Auto Leasing, LLC., for an initial term estimated award of $7,966,800.  The award is to include a two (2) year optional amount of $5,311,200 for a total five (5) year award of $13,278,000.

 

That works out to more than 2.6 million dollars a year for unmarked vehicles.  If you read the backup material you will see that they plan to get:

30 intermediate sedans, 2 door

30 intermediate sedans, 4 door

30 full size sedans, 4 door

30 full size pickups, 2 wheel drive, extended cab

30 full size pickups, 2 wheel drive, crew cab

30 full size pickups, 4 wheel drive, extended cab

30 full size pickups, 4 wheel drive, crew cab

10 passenger vans, mini

10 passenger vans, full size

That comes to 230 vehicles.  According to their 2014 annual report the police department had 1,017 officers.

The money to pay for the vehicles appears to be coming from external grants.  Other than about half a million dollars a year worth of confiscated funds that could be spent on something else, none of the money appears to be coming from our local pockets.  Instead the money seems to be coming from our federal pockets.

I wonder who will pay for the gasoline?

Hopefully they won’t have Connecticut plates.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Need not apply

April 16, 2016

The Times published two articles in their Saturday, March 2, 2016 edition about the mess at the city’s purchasing department.

In the first the Times points out that city staff wants to cancel a request for qualifications  for services to manage the construction of their quality of life projects.  Once again the city has asked companies to spend significant amounts in the hope of getting business only to have the city cancel the process once it has the vendor’s financial numbers.  You can read the whole article here.

I suspect that the winner here would not have been who the city wanted and so cancelling the bid is a way to regroup and bring the issue back up when they think that we have forgotten.

Some potential bidders will not even respond to a city request for bids because they feel their chances of winning good business are nill.

In another article, “Questions surface over city engineering bid” the Times points out that in 2014 the city conducted an accelerated bid process for engineering services that was cancelled after their presumed favorite was not the best choice.

The city’s procurement process is often not fair.  It is often rigged in such a manner as to make their choice of vendor the winner.  They use different tricks but the result is frequently the same, either their choice of vendor wins or they cancel the bid.

We’ll write more about the specific tricks they use in future posts.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

1 Comment | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

I bought it on sale, so I saved money

April 15, 2016

The city is planning to issue $20 million of revenue refunding bonds relating to the ball park.

Step one was to meet as the Downtown Development Corporation:

downtowndevelopmentapril112016

Five minutes later they planned to meet as city council:

citycouncilapril112016

Then they considered:

citycouncilapril112016item8

You and I would probably think that they did this to save us some money because of lower interest rates.

Unfortunately, according to the resolution the refinancing will end up costing us money.  From the resolution:

…notwithstanding the fact that the aggregate amount of payments to be made under the Series 2016 Bonds will exceed the aggregate amount of payments that would have been made under the terms of the Series 2013 Tax Exempt Bonds which are being refunded; the maximum amount of such excess shall not exceed the amount specified in Section 5 hereof;

And then from section 5:

(c) the aggregate amount of payments to be made on the Series 2016 Bonds shall not
exceed the aggregate amount of payments that would have been made on the refunded Series 2013 Tax
Exempt Bonds had the refunding not occurred by more than $13,285,000, net of any issuer contribution;

You can read the resolution here.  Don’t be surprised if the city takes this link down once people start looking at it.

The mayor, the city manager, and the city’s chief financial officer are each individually empowered to sell the bonds.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | Ball park, City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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