City to contractor: Let me tell you how much money you can make

February 23, 2013

City council will be considering an item next Tuesday that shows how wrong-headed city staff can be.

It seems that the parents of a blogger (refusethejuice.typepad.com) own a construction firm that submitted a bid for a city construction project.  They submitted the low bid.

Someone thinks that they should be disqualified because one of their line items came in above an amount specifically allowed by the bid request.  The have been deemed non-responsive “for failure to comply with the requirement of Base Bid IV that the mobilization costs not exceed 5%”.

Huh?  A bid should ask you for your price, not tell you how much you can charge.  Their bid came in with the low price.  The fact that one line item came in at 5.05% of the total when the specifications said it could only come in at 5% does not change the fact that when you add up all of the items in the bid, they were low.

Where do these guys come up with requirements like these?

Could it be that the blogger is frequently critical of the people over at the city?  Or is it that by their wrong-headed rules they must disqualify the bid but want to reward the blogger’s recent support of city hall activities?

The blogger and his family are not the important issue here.

Trying to control how the free market bids is the issue.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

True cost of the moves

February 16, 2013

I have written before about getting at the true cost of the moves from the soon to be demolished city hall into the multiple buildings that city council has chosen.

My last number came to $63.9 million.  The city told us it would be $33 million on this page on the city’s web site.

I have been trying to keep that number updated, but it appears that we will not know about major parts of it until they are done.  As Call Me Crazy commented on  More on the roll-out (roll over) plan a city representative was quoted in the Times as saying  “The city has already spent around $300 million publicly funding Downtown revitalization.”  What is that all about?

The deception continues.  The city has been issuing contracts for job order contracts for construction work.  They are using these contracts for work related to the move out of city hall.  Unfortunately state law does not require them to present these projects to city council unless the cost for an individual project exceeds $500,000.

In Minimal due to condition of building we saw that the city has been issuing work orders under the $500,000 threshold for work on these buildings.  Since they do not have to publish the work orders, we will have to wait to get them through what are commonly called open records requests.

The city is under no obligation to produce a document that does not exist.  We must wait to find out the true story.

We will though.

In the mean time I will turn to what the city is not spending money on and how we compare to other cities.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Open Government, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Better

February 12, 2013

According to the  El Paso Times  the companies that are building our new ball park are going to hold a business outreach event next Wednesday (February 13, 2013) from  7:30 to 9 AM at  2401 East Missouri.  Evidently tradesmen that would like an opportunity to bid on some of the work are encouraged to attend.

To me the Times does  a pretty good job of  announcing events.  My observation is that they only go skin deep and fail to let us know what the real story is.  Often they  carry the water for some group and do not reveal the true story.

This event is good though.  The ball park is being built by commercial firms.  The will not be using buy boards to circumvent responsible purchasing.  Sub contractors will be given opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities and compete based upon price.  Price.  At the end of the day if there are two offers from firms that do good work  the decision will be made primarily based upon price — not the personal favorite of city staff.

I suspect that this method of construction and buying was significantly influenced by the the people who own the team.  I thank them.

We should not see a $677,000 chiller or a $543,000 foam roof  or a $94,000 cieling for the same city hall that they want to tear down.  These jobs were done through bid boards.

The contractor has an incentive to save our money — 30% of the savings.  My only problem with that will be if they lower the specifications and deliver an inferior product to us.  The city engineer has temporarily abandoned his post and is now the city’s lead person on this project.  Council has given him the sole authority to change the specifications.  That is not good.

We deserve better — and it appears that we will get it this time — not great, but better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Times, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Give them an inch and they take a yard

February 10, 2013

Next week’s (Tuesday, February 12, 2013) city council agenda has an example of how the city uses multiple sequential actions to trick us.

Item 11 requests permission to award contracts totaling $570,000 for services relating to the new phone system that the system is installing.

The backup material makes the sequence of events clear:

  • October 12, 2010 council approves the purchase of a fancy phone system for the 10th floor of city hall.  The system was not bid.  It was purchased through a state sanctioned bid board. City staff chose their favorite brand.   Citizens spoke against the system as being much more expensive than competitive units.  We were assured that the system was only for the use of the mayor and city council.
  • January 10, 2012 council approves purchase orders for upgrades to the network hardware and software.  These upgrades were necessary for the expansion of the phone system.
  • February 28, 2012 council approves the purchase of more of the same phone system for the police and fire departments
  • October 30, 2012 council buys more of the same phone system for other city departments

This started with city staff picking the system that they wanted.  Competition was not allowed.  As time went by more units were purchased in the name of compatibility with the existing system.

Competitive systems that are as good (if not better) could have been used that would have cost us less than half of what the city is spending.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

More on the roll-out (roll over) plan

February 6, 2013

Yesterday I wrote about the city’s proposed bond roll-out plan.

Looking at it more closely I see that staff has chosen to categorize  project status as MP (for Master Planning), B (Bid Activity), L (Land Acquisition), D (Design), or C (Construction).

I see many projects that are designated C meaning the phase the city puts them in is construction.

I don’t see a single B for bidding.  Have they already done the bidding?  Doesn’t hiring a contractor come before starting construction?

The city’s fiscal year starts September 1.  We are now five months through fiscal year 2013.  According to the document the city plans to go through the whole process (planning, land acquisition, design, bidding, construction) for some of the projects in the remaining seven months of this year.  I guess maybe they plan to cut corners.  Doing the right thing seems to take too much time.

One project that caught my attention is listed as “Convention Center North Pedestrian Pathway”.  The city plans to spend $500 thousand on  this item.  What is this?  The convention center is bounded on the north by the Bataan Memorial Trainway which puts the trains below street level.  Is the city planning to build a path over this?

North from the convention center, the adjacent facility will be our new ball park.  Is this project really part of the ball park and have we been fooled into financing it through the bond issue?

We were told that the ball park would be primarily financed through the hotel occupancy tax.  Is this a way of burying part of the true costs of the ball park?

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Cato

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