The price is, unless it’s more

January 2, 2014

This item on the January 2, 2014 city council agenda doesn’t look good to me.

The item is for the re-re-re-re-construction of our San Jacinto Plaza of perpetual remodeling.

The city got three bids that they posted in their backup documentation.

  • F. T. James                                            $7,555,444
  • Venegas Engineering Management.          $7,012.468
  • Basic IDIQ                                             $4,484,488

How can that be?

Firstly why did we only three bidders respond?   Construction work is not plentiful in El Paso.

Then how can the wild price discrepancy be explained?

Simple really

The price difference may turn out to the the simplest part to explain.  According to the backup material:

“Work under this unit price contract is only an estimated value and will be ordered, performed, invoiced and paid by measured quantity.  The actual cost of this contract may be higher or lower than the total estimated value and will be the sum total of unit prices at the end of the contract term.”

If it turns out that if you are the city’s go to contractor (the city has been used this firm to rebuild the various buildings it needed to replace city hall — without bidding) you might know more than what is written in the bid specifications.  I don’t know this as a fact but am hard pressed to explain the price difference any other way.

Then again maybe the final bill will come in closer the the other bids.

What kind of council

What kind of city council would approve a construction contract without a maximum price.  I hope that ours does not.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

New Year Wishes

January 1, 2014

I hope that all of you survived the festivities last night and will be ready to tackle the new year tomorrow.

My wish for each of you next year is good health, good government, and the opportunity to prosper.

The authors here at the blog have been thinking about running a series next year about what we would like to see changed in our various levels of government.

Starting at the top we first plan to address our three organizing documents, the U. S. Constitution, the Texas Constitution, and the El Paso City Charter.

Feel free to write up an article and submit it for posting on this blog.  Feel free to communicate privately with me at brutusep@yahoo.com.

Thank you for your continued readership and support.

Happy New Year!

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | City government, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Some Times

December 31, 2013

The Times complained the other day in an editorial about how our local council of judges “unilaterally” (even though it is their job) raised the rate that court appointed attorneys get paid by the county.  The new rate gives the attorneys $90 per hour while they are in court — less than some plumbers and IT firms charge.

I thought I would look into how the Times has been doing at the public trough.

Various laws require the city to publish notices in local newspapers.  The contract currently being used was bid in 2010.  The one previous to that was bid in 2007.

According to the two documents below the Times circulation dropped between 2007 and 2010.

2007newspaper

2010newspaper

The 2007 city council agenda item gave the city staff permission to spend an estimated $100,000 dollars annually with either of two newspapers, the El Paso Times or El Paso, Inc.

Let’s leave it to your imagination to figure out how city staff decided which newspaper to use.

Incredible

The 2010 contract raised the annual amount to $225,000.  That’s a lot more noticing activity.  I wonder why but doubt that the cause was a doubling of material that had to be published.

Could it be that the extra money bought editorial space?

Why was the editorial written?

Was the editorial another effort to pay someone back?

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Amateurs

December 31, 2013

The city has a new agenda presentation facility on their web site.

Someone should do their job

Ok, this is new software for the city after all.  However someone should have tested it and  taken  the bugs out of it before making it live.

What’s wrong?

  1. The top of the page has a new agenda search capability.  It’s a pity that none of the past agendas are available.  Do they plan to load the old agendas?  They should.  In the meantime some simple text explaining what is available would help.
  2. The site is slow, but I guess Will Rogers was right when he said “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government that we’re paying for”.
  3. When you finally do get to the document you want to read you will probably find that you cannot expand the text if you are on an iPad, making the documents very hard to read for some of us.

Simple

These are simple problems and will be fixed, I hope.  The solution is to expect more from management at the city.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Constitutional attack

December 30, 2013

This editorial in the El Paso Times should be of concern to all of us.

The Times is upset that our local council of judges had the audacity to demand that fees paid to court assigned attorneys be raised by $15 dollars an hour.  That means that a court appointed attorney would receive $90 per hour while in court defending someone.  Try to find a $90 per hour attorney.

The real issue

The times wrote “…is a classic example of the dysfunctional system set up by the Texas Constitution”.  Yes, like every other law and ordinance in the state is set up by our constitution.  Actually the council of judges was created for every Texas county by our supreme court.  You can read their rule here.

Over the years since our country was established there has been a lot of discussion about the proper role of the constitutions, both national and state.  Some say that the proper way to change them is through the methods written into the documents (Article 17 in the case of Texas and Article V at the national level).

Later some of those who wanted change but did not want to cross the high bar required enjoyed watching our supreme courts overrule the legislatures.  John Marshall did that to us in Marbury v. Madison.  The fact that the case was about Marshall’s failure to perform his duties and that he was somehow both secretary of state and chief justice at the time evidently did not cause him to recuse himself.

Now one of the new techniques being used is to simply ignore the constitutions.  The theory is that someone will have to spend a lot of money in court to stop you so do what you want and count on the legal system to protect you.

Hard to believe

In this editorial the Times complains that the council of judges acted without input from others.  Actually the council requested a smaller increase last year at county budget time and our commissioners court rejected them.

Some of the lines in the editorial piece:

The judges can order the additional expenditure and essentially mandate that county Commissioners Court foot the bill — taxpayers be damned.

That sort of rule by fiat is an abuse of taxpayers.

But unilateral action is not an answer.

Where were they?

Where was the Times when city council voted unilaterally to tear down city hall and build a ball park?   Where were they when commissioners court imposed $150 million in bond expenses for the county hospital — by fiat?

Taxpayers be dammed indeed.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty.

Cato

6 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

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