At the end of the last chapter, you could see Finley lubing up his fist and instructing City Council to bend over. He has some new info on the Old City Hall Hose Job….here is the home stretch leading us to today:
May 14th, 2018: Finley dumps the 1.4 million pound anvil onto Council’s pointy heads. Without bothering to present the losing bids, he states that ASJ Construction was lowest qualified bid…and the following is the current situation
- Base bid $890,000
- Alternate #1 $25,000
- Alternate #2 $128,000
- Total price $1,043,000
EXCLUDED from this bid are the $125,000 for the elevator….the $60,000 for fire suppression…the $88,000 already incurred…and of course the ridiculous $83,000 audio/visual screw job, which is apparently untouchable – though for some strange reason, it says in parenthesis “some savings possible” – which is hilarious because it will end up being almost $100,000 by the time it hits the newspapers 60 days from this meeting.
So we are now at around $1,400,000…which doesn’t include cabinets, counter-tops, dais, signage, and flat work. Unsurprisingly, Finley recommends Council take this deal [take it, good and hard]. Council says “thank you sir, may I have another??” and approves this unanimously.
May 29th, 2018: Unrelated item to enrage you – health insurance costs are set to increase nearly 7% for city employees (remember those awesome benefits!) which will cost the city nearly $80,000 this year since they spend over $1,000,000.00 per year on employee health coverage. Finley states that this could be reduced if city employees are willing to pay a higher co-pay for prescriptions and he’ll go ask them! BAHAHAHAHA. Seriously?? In a shocking answer, city employees told him “no thanks, we don’t want to chip in any more for our gold-plated coverage…let the city eat it all”. Christ. Must be nice.
July 23, 2018: Monica finally officially brings this Azbell monstrosity to Council. Why now? I have no idea…the fix has been in forever, as I have documented. She states “we have been working with Azbell since March 2017” [which is when they appeared in the minutes for the very first time] – the grand total is $94,674.57. Talbert calls for a vote [apparently having absolutely no recollection that she herself already voted to award Broadcast Works the A/V contract back in August of 2014] and this ugly turd is passed.
Not a single peep from anyone present that this seems like a ludicrous amount of money to spend. Nobody remembers the $34,000 bid for the same thing in 2014. Did anyone even look at the bid sheet? Four 70-inch LCD TVs for $2150 each is the VERY FIRST ITEM. They cost $900 at Wal-Mart. This is disgraceful.
News of this abortion is reported a few days later in The Lampasas Dispatch…whereupon The Original Lampasshole reads the article and blows a gasket…leading to this blog and the detective work you see on these pages.
Aug 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” [you literally can’t make this stuff up]. Council, who is already committed to wasting $1.4 million dollars on this, isn’t going to let $10,800 stand in the way. Change Order #1 is approved unanimously.
Sept 20, 2018: Forty-three days into project, we find out from Finley that “Council may recall approval of roofing repair to correct material failure and scupper height [no, I don’t remember this – never saw anything about it]. Based on non-performance of the selected contractor, Staff sought a quotation through the GC of the City Hall project. Based on their inspection, roofing contractor would not guarantee the repair due to overlapping seam. He recommended a complete re-roof of both roofs [the other roof is Municipal Court…why is this all lumped in together? Two-for-one roof day?] at a cost of $45,194.
I’ll be charitable and assign only half of that $45,000 to the City Hall remodel – or another $23,000 for Change Order #2 – it is unclear if this has been approved by Council yet since the minutes are not posted for the last two meetings.
The weird thing about finding out the roof is crap and has to be COMPLETELY replaced, is that back in May 23, 2016, JNW said the building “is in good condition” and then in October 2016, Finley handed JNW a check for $18,000 for “structural analysis and provide documentation” of the building. Guess they don’t count the roof as an important part of the structure? Beats me. I’m not an architect or an engineer raking in huge fees.
November 16, 2018: Lampasas Dispatch reports another change order (#3) for ASJ Construction in the amount of $16,417.
I will keep you all up-to-date on the project as it limps along to completion. Can’t wait to see what the next change order is!