Playing with the numbers

October 22, 2013

This week’s El Paso city council agenda has several purchasing contracts on it.

I notice that city staff is not using the term “low bidder” much anymore.  Instead they use the term “best value” which can lead to all sorts of subjective interpretation.

An agenda item that caught my attention was number 8B on the agenda.  The city wants to purchase brake lines and services for their fleet.  You can see the backup material for the agenda here.

There were three bidders.  The city’s evaluation method resulted in a score of 38.41 (out of a potential 100) for the highest priced bidder, 68.38 for the bidder with the second lowest price, and 79.67 for the lowest price bidder.  The evaluation considered cost, reputation and quality, operational information, employee benefits and past performance.

Best value

City staff is not recommending the bidder with the highest evaluation score and that also had the lowest prices, but suggests giving the award to the 2nd place bidder.

If staff gave the firm the highest subjective rating and the firm had the lowest price, how can they not be the “best value”?

the city complains of not getting a price list.

Is this sloppy paperwork from city staff, or is this more favoritism?

Poor form

Then item 9B proposes the award of a $70,757.60 contract for construction services.  The low bidder offered a price of $44,408.83 but staff recommends that they be declared “non-responsive for not filling bid proposal form correctly”.

There is probably more to this story but the city’s stated reason seems problematic given the number of things Scrivener has made mistakes on in the city attorney’s office.

No bid

Item 9C shows more playing with words.  The backup material for council says “This is a low bid, unit price contract”.

Baloney!  The bid package told bidders “The project will be awarded to two bidders:  the lowest base bid and the 2nd lowest base bid”.

The bid package then went on to tell bidders “The estimated base expenditure for each contract is $100,000 per year for two years for a total amount of $200,000 per contract”.

The city evaluated two bids.  One was for $322,580 and the other was for $473,700.

City staff proposes giving each firm a contract.  I guess it will be up to staff to decide which firm gets what portion of the business.

On a positive note

City staff has placed other purchases on the agenda that actually would award the business to the lowest price, competent bidder.  That’s a start.

We deserve better.

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

Lazy, incompetent, or dishonest?

October 21, 2013

The airport has item 7 on the consent agenda at city council  this week.

The item proposes to award a sole-source contract for about $100,000 a year for three years to a company that will maintain software and equipment at the airport parking lot.

The backup material states “Mitchell Adding Machine DBA Mitchell Time and Parking is the sole source provider for Armano McGann software and revenue control equipment used to operate the Airport Parking Lot”.

State law allows sole-source purchases to be be done without bidding.

The truth

It took about 30 seconds to go to the Armano McGann web site and find this page  which shows dozens of dealers and distributors.

Amano

Does staff know the truth?  Are they deliberately facilitating a lie?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Planned Failure

October 18, 2013

The city commissioned a traffic study for the ball park.  The revised edition was published December 3, 2012.

The study dealt with Missouri and Santa Fe streets and not the broader traffic situation around the area.  The results were published with letter grades being given for predicted level of service  ranging from A (for good) to F (bad).  Charts were presented for inbound (before the game) and outbound traffic delays.

We all know that delays will occur whenever an event with a lot of patrons occurs.  The predicted results speak for themselves.

Inbound

The intersection of Santa Fe and Wyoming (leaving I-10 from the west) earned a grade of “F” with an anticipated delay of 202.8 seconds (the study did not specifically indicate that the number was in seconds but I believe that 202.8 minutes would be worse than an “F”).

As a point of reference the second worst intersection along Santa Fe (Santa Fe and Paisano) got a “D” with a predicted delay of 50.4.   If a “D” is not good at 50.4 then a score of 202.8 is really bad.  The term the report used was “excessive delay”.

Outbound

Santa Fe and Sheldon (the road just south of the civic center parking garage exit) got an incredible 433.5 with Santa Fe at Yandell (for those going west) getting  a “D” at 47.4.

It gets worse

The study tried to predict what would happen if there was an event at both the baseball park and the civic center at the same time.

Incoming traffic caused four intersections to be rated “F” (Missouri at Kansas, Missouri at Oregon, Santa Fe at Wyoming, and Santa Fe at Franklin).  Santa Fe at Wyoming jumped up to a delay of 467.4.  Two intersections got rated “E”.  Maybe some school kids should petition their schools to get “E” added to the grading system.  It is obviously better than an “F”.

Outbound traffic shows five intersections rated “F” (Santa Fe at Yandell, Santa Fe at Wyoming, Santa Fe at Franklin, Santa Fe at Main, and Santa Fe at Sheldon).  Sheldon takes the cake with a delay of 875.9.

Not complete

The study did not consider what base level traffic will be when the downtown cabal succeeds in revitalizing downtown and there are a lot more people down there.

Nor did it consider what would happen if there was an simultaneous event at the Plaza Theater.

There are plans that have been presented to the city where the recommendation is to place the new sports arena on top of the civic center.  Yes, they suggest tearing down the civic center.  Who knows what will happen then.

Spend money

The report suggests:

COEP (city of El Paso) should consider the use police [sic] or code enforcement officers for traffic control at signalized intersections, and intersections where turning movements will be numerous …

By the way, the city’s contract with the baseball team requires the city to pay for the police.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Taxing Times

October 16, 2013

The El Paso Times recently reported that the city of El Paso’s sales tax revenue has increased 2.3 percent for the year through October.

What they did not report was what Brutus mentioned the other day in Bad Bets.

While the increase in the sales tax collections is good news, the bad news is that the city is counting on (they have already budgeted) a 4.3 percent increase.

Hotel Occupancy Tax revenues are down one percent while the city told us to expect a three percent increase.

Remember that the city is now telling us that they will have to use general fund revenue to supplement bond payments for the ball park.

Unless things turn around we are looking at a revenue shortfall.  What services will have to be cut or what fees will have to be increased?

There was a time when the reporters at the Times researched their articles instead of just printing what some government agency asked them to print.

Muckraker

8 Comments | Ball park, City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

Another ball park consultant

October 15, 2013

The city council agenda for October 15, 2013 has another interesting ball park contract on it.

The item would authorize the city manager to sign a contract in the amount of $347,474 (plus another $50,000 if it is needed) for “Construction Testing and Inspection Services for El Paso Ballpark’’.

The backup material for council indicates that the funding source might be the baseball stadium construction accounts.  That’s the one that has 50, no 64, no 72 million dollars allocated to it so far.  Unfortunately the resolution contains this phrase that we see all too often:

“and that the City Manager be authorized to establish the funding sources and make any necessary budget transfers and execute any and all documents necessary for execution of this agreement.”

In other words the city manager can take the money from whatever account she wants to.

There are millions of dollars being spent for projects around the ball park that are not being allocated to the $72 million dollar number that we see now.

Lots of technical help

In Inside Job I pointed out that we already have a contract for an owner’s representative for $853,000, and a contract with an architect for $3,820,680.  We have also paid for traffic studies and demolition studies.  One would think that with these professionals working along side of our city financial experts that we could build a $38 million dollar ball park for $38 million dollars.

Not another penny

The engineer being hired signed his part of the agreement July 1, 2013.  Why has it taken so long for this contract to come before council?  Could it be that other bigger fish had to be fried and city staff wanted to let the dust settle?

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | Ball park, City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »