Comments on: July 7, 2014: Council Live Updates

By: John Q.

John Q. — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 02:10:32 +0000

To add to Chuck’s point, the city has to award a construction contract for the sidewalk work. At that point, you’ll be dealing with real numbers based on what the various bidders have submitted. Contrary to Jeff’s claim that there’s an incentive to spend the entire amount, bidders have every incentive to bid competitively. If they don’t, they won’t get awarded the contract.

By: Chuck Warpehoski

Chuck Warpehoski — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 17:43:02 +0000

This is a multi-step but transparent process. At the assessment step, we are dealing with cost estimates. We don't yet have bids. As Abby Elias indicated, public works projects require bids, those bids are posted online at: [link] RFPs are also posted through state aggregators, eg: [link] Contracts over $25k require City Council approval. A summary of the bid process is generally included in the cover memo or supporting documents for the contract approval. For example: [link] The city ledger is posted online in A2 Open Book, so you can see what and who we actually pay: [link]

By: Fred Zimmerman

Fred Zimmerman — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 16:02:05 +0000

@1& @2 — you seem like you have some personal knowledge of the construction trade, is this informing your view point?

It doesn’t seem very likely to me that the people putting out the bids are stupid or corrupt, isn’t it more likely that the city is using a small set of more expensive contractors because that’s the safe move? I see the smoke but I’m skeptical about the fire.

By: Jeff Hayner

Jeff Hayner — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 04:14:33 +0000

I have not emailed anyone about this- I spoke at the first meeting after I saw it on the agenda, and this public hearing, basically asking the same question. I would be happy to send you a copy of my PH notes which include my calculations, and the cities/costs I mentioned. All I know is at the very first public neighborhood meeting we discussed the possibility of an assesment for the two property owners, and I figured it would be pretty low, as the total job should not exceed $22,000 accordinng to my rule of thumb calculations- $11/square foot. When I heard they had authorized $12,000 just for the initial study I thought- is this an inter-departmental charge? Where is that 12K going, and what do we get for it? That would still only make it a 36K job. Throw in the curb and guter work, the minor tree removal and site prep, no matter how I add it up I can’t reach 80K. So I went to council to ask- why so much? The response last night was basically- this is just an estimate, it is a difficult site. But we never seem to hear what the actual cost was at the conclusion of the project. If Council approves 80K you can bet it will be spent, that’s why I was so adamant that someone get a look at the bid package before approving the expenditure. I share your concerns about overcharging- and we did pay more for the same parking meters. JeffreyLHayner at gmail dot com

By: Curious

Curious — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 17:17:52 +0000

Mr. Hayner, have you received any feedback from anyone acting in an official capacity regarding the cost of the Barton sidewalk and how it seems to be more than 3 times the cost of sidewalks in general? Have you emailed anyone at council about this directly? If you have any specific docs you already looked up that show what sidewalks cost in general, I’d like to get that, because I do plan to start emailing councilmembers about such things. It seems like one of the possible explanations we pay so much more in property tax but have so much less to show for it is overcharging by vendors/overpaying by A2. If I recall, we paid quite a bit more for our parking meters than other cities as well (same meters, I believe).