The current delay for the $1.5 million Vanity Project? The elevator, of course! As I had speculated all along. This is the Energizer Bunny of construction projects, apparently. Let’s look at the string of missed deadlines for this disaster:
November 14, 2016: Finley “Spinley” deGraffenried brings bids to Council on elevator equipment and installation. Bids were:
- Austin Elevator Co $96,605
- Trojan Elevator Co $206,909
- RKJ Construction $119,532
“Greasy” Chris Harrison moves to accept bid from RKJ – not the lowest bid – because “they are local and have done previous work for the city”. Seconded by Mike White and passes unanimously.
August 13, 2018: Five days into a 120-day project, ASJ is already asking for another $10,800 for Old City Hall in Change Order #1. Apparently a bathroom needed to be reconfigured, and “the price of metal went up” [LOL]. [You will notice that 115 days from August 13th would mean a finish date of around December 6th, 2018].
November 16th, 2018: Change order #3 for $16,417 and “City officials now hope the building will be ready for use in early 2019,” according to a Lampasas Dispatch article. [Nice and vague – another 3 month delay]
March 10, 2019: Finley assures City Council that the elevator for the City Hall Boondoggle would “arrive in mid-March” and take a week or two to install.
March 24, 2019: According to Finley and city council packets, “production for elevator equipment has been pushed back two to three weeks”. The arrival time is now “projected for the first or second week of April…and crews will take approximately two to three weeks to install.” [This implies a new finish date of approximately May 5th, 2019]
July 30th, 2019: FOUR MONTHS of minutes have showed ZERO further discussion of Old City Hall renovation and The Seven Goldfish seem to have forgotten it completely, as it never appears on Spinley’s reports or Council minutes/packets. I myself wondered out loud why it wasn’t finished yet, seeing as how the last supposed completion date was back on May 5th. I even publicly speculated it was probably the wildly overpriced elevator.
September 17th, 2019: Six weeks after my musings on why the hell the Vanity Project wasn’t done yet, The Dispatch states today that “although the City manager said he hesitates to predict exactly when the renovation project will conclude, he said the project is “very close” to completion. The City is also waiting on “final elevator adjustments”, whatever that means. Yeah, that’s the same elevator that Spinley assured us was going to be done in March…six months ago.
Just a reminder: City Council COULD have given the elevator bid to Austin Elevators for $96,000 but then-Council-genius Chris Harrison wanted to “keep it local” and give the contract to RKJ Construction for $126,000 (originally $119,000). How’s that working out for you?