Me first, children second

January 30, 2013

The  January 29, 2013 city council agenda (here)  has some interesting items on it.

Items 6B, 6C and 6D deal with issuing contracts to install school zone flashers and pedestrian ramps for the disabled.  It looks like there are three separate items because of the quantity of work to be done.  They appear to be similar but each deals with different schools.

The backup material tells us that the bids were due October 3, 2012 and were then evaluated by October 15, 2012.  Evidently it takes 12 days to evaluate bids that affect the safety of our children whereas we all know that a ballpark or new city hall needs to be evaluated in a day, maybe even in hours.

Items 6C and 6D are being recommended for award to company A (El Paso based) — after all it was the low bidder.

Item 6B is being recommended for award to company B (Arizona based).  Company B was not the low bidder.  Company A was the low bidder.

Why don’t they want to give the business to company A?  According to the backup material company A is not “responsible”. The city could have said “responsive” but since the public is considered to be “crazies” what’s the harm in some slander?

Let’s see why company A is not “responsible”.  According to the recommendation:

  • “The proposal is on a form other than the official proposal forms issued to the bidder or bidders”
  • “The bidder modifies the proposal in a manner that alters the condition or requirements for work as stated in the proposal”

What?  Company A bid on the other two projects at the same time in a manner that was evidently acceptable to city staff.  Did they use the wrong form on this particular bid?  Somehow city staff was able to analyze the offer, even if it was on a different form,  and conclude that company A offered the lowest price.  Company A did not use the right form?  Oh!  The humanity of it!  What a horrible inconvenience.

It appears that Company A also had the audacity to suggest different requirements.  They are in the business of doing this type of work.  Were they trying to tell the city that there was a better, more effective way of doing the work?  If so, and the city for some reason felt compelled to follow the bidding laws (a bid should be analyzed against published, set, specifications), why did the city not cancel the bid and redo it with better specifications?  There was plenty of time.  After all the city has been busy feathering their nest.

This stinks.  The city probably has other reasons, but it must be inconvenient to share them with the public.

I doubt that Company A will complain.  They got two out of the three jobs.  They will probably keep their mouth shut rather than risk the wrath of the city.  Who would listen to an irresponsible company?

The fact that it took more than four months to approve something for the safety of our children while city staff can approve building moves for their own convenience in a matter of days tells us a lot about where staff’s priorities are.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

No parking zone

January 28, 2013

There they go again.

The city wants to lease a parking lot for either the new city hall or the 801 Texas building. Either way they did not tell us the truth.

This is really pretty simple.

On September 14, 2012 the city chief financial officer made a presentation to city council and to the public. This was to try to convince us to move city hall. The plan was to move into a few buildings. It was all figured out.

The main part of city staff would move into the Times building and its parking lot. One lot, singular, not two lots. The building was in great shape, needed “minimal” improvements and the lot could handle our parking needs.

The city subsequently bought the building and has spent a lot of money remodeling it. They got their parking lot too.

Now do they want another parking lot for the Times building — or do they want it for the 801 Texas building that we were told in the same presentation had ample parking?

Step one:

  • Start with the same presentation from the city’s chief financial officer.
  • You can see the page here 801TexasParkingPortrait
  • The chief financial officer told us that the building had “ample customer parking in city-owned lot and streets”.  Ample is defined as “
    enough or more than enough; plentiful”.

Step two:

  • Next Tuesday’s (January 29, 2013) city council agenda has as item 14 “Discussion and action that the City Manager be authorized to sign a Lease of Property by and between the City of El Paso and Union Pacific Railroad Company for approximately 43,800 square feet on Mills St., between N. Ochoa St. and N. Virginia St., El Paso, Texas, the property to be used primarily for City employee/visitor parking.”
  • The lease, with it’s automatic 3% price increase per year, comes to over $611 thousand.

We were told that if we bought the building, parking was “ample”.  Now they need to lease an acre of land two blocks over.

The told us that they needed to buy one parking lot with the Times building.  They did.  They told us that the 801 Texas building had ample parking.  They want yet another parking lot now that the other purchases have been approved.

That’s another $611 thousand that we should add to the cost of the move.  My numbers come to over $66 million and raising  for a project that we were told would cost $33 million.

Will city council speak up?  Will they remember?  Are some of them part of the lie?

Is this deliberate lying or is it gross negligence?  Either way —

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

Double Standard?

January 27, 2013

In an earlier article Efficient, hardworking city staff I wrote about the “Score Summary Form” and how city staff had produced a definitive analysis of a complex project in just one day.  The form boiled all of their hard work down to four ratings, 1, 2, 3, and 4.

I wondered about the consistency of the reviews and about several other things.

Compare that with these two pages (801TexasRanking) that are the comparable documents supporting the decision to award a contract on the 801 Texas building that the city just bought. You should be able to right click on the document to rotate it–sorry.

While the second page indicates that the city expected to conduct this analysis in one day also, the rating was not published for 8 days.    Maybe the fix was not in on the 801 Texas building.  Look at the numerical values (they are on a scale of 1-100).

Why the different rating systems?  Is it possible that in the case of 801 Texas the city was actually interested in doing a rating instead of rubber stamping a decision that had already been made?

I wonder why the firm that got the ball park contract did not bid on this one.  They did bid on the Luther building and got it.  That means that they were good enough to get two contracts but did not even bother to bid on a third?  What gives here?

What would the result have been if the 1-100 scale had been used for the ball park?

I suspect that when the true story finally comes out it will not be a pretty one.

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government, Open Government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Zero visability purchasing

January 26, 2013

Item 12B (1) on the November 13, 2012 city council agenda requests permission to issue a purchase order in the amount of $560,406 for computer equipment.

Once again these items were not competitively bid — they were purchased from a buy board.

The backup material does not tell us what quantities or models are being purchased.  We have no idea if the prices are in line or not.  You can see the backup material here.

This is a pretty common occurrence with computer items on the city council agenda.

We all know the problems with buy boards not being competitive.

The backup material asks the question “Is there an urgent need for the product/service?”  The department answered “yes” since the equipment was to be used to “refresh” (replace) existing equipment.  Urgent?  Not at all!

Items 12B(2) and 12B(3) totaling a little more than $608 thousand have the same lack of detail.  Just give me the money.  Let me spend it without oversight.

It appears that the information technology department does not want us to know what they are up to.

We deserve better.

Brutus

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

Super workers!

January 24, 2013

I don’t know if it has hit you yet but our city staff has really performed remarkably recently.

As it turns out the city chose to issue two Requests for Proposals (RFP) to remodel two of the buildings that city council just bought and that they plan to move city departments into post haste.  The RFPs were both due on the same day.

I don’t know if you have ever had to have the city review and approve any construction related issues for your property.  They can make a snail look speedy.

In this case though the city staff was able to plow through what must have been hundreds or thousands of pages of responses from potential vendors.  These two projects are both multi-million dollar efforts and cannot be as simply as evaluating a new roof for a building that you will be tearing down soon.

Somehow they did it though.  They had five raters evaluate each project (I don’t know if that was ten different people, or five bleary-eyed ones) and publish both sets of results within 8 days.  That is remarkable.  The original published schedules showed that they would evaluate both in just one day, but we all know that you can only do that with a ball park evaluation.

Now that they are done, are we going to turn these five super workers loose on the rest of the city?  At the speed they work we should be able to lay off lots of dead wood.

We know that this is a sham.

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »