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The city overpaid MILLIONS for the Mossy Dealership and obnoxiously avoided learning its lessons from its mistakes.
At the time of purchase, public concerns were all attacked with city responses about how the Mossy Dealership was super duper turnkey and the city wouldn't have to spend any more money on it. Except for the gazillions of things that the city had to remediate, and upgrade, but nobody mentioned that stuff when the city was overpaying for the dealership and calling it turnkey. The council either looked the other way or figured no one would notice or care years later that they were full of crap.
The costs for the public works yard have been trickling in as hundred thousand dollar chunks for years. The newest charge is $180,000 for a back up generator. A good idea? Sounds good to me. So good that it must have been on the the top-secret list of future non-turn-key upgrades? How many pages long is that top-secret list?
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The money is for the generator and fiber optic cabling.
ReplyDeleteThe city doesn't collect summary minutes of its meetings anymore and their web search sucks anyways, but my recollection is that the city already did some sort of project for network connectivity between city hall and the PWY. I also recall Barth saying she had requested that staff bring forward the list of all the useful upgrades to the PWY all at one time because she wasn't going to vote for more PWY money if they didn't.
Should the cable and backup generator costs been on the list they gave Barth a couple years ago?
I wonder why the expense for high-speed cabling and backup generator for the Public Works yard is tucked away in the budget. It seems to me that it should have been brought forward as a separate agenda item, especially considering the history of the purchase and renovation of the Mossy Chevrolet property.
ReplyDeleteThe City paid $1 million over the appraisal for a facility that was supposed to be "turnkey." It turned out to need over $3 million worth of renovation. When the last expenditures were approved, that was to be the end of it. Is the City sneaking in additional money for what already is a very expensive project?
I remember that fiber optic connection between the PW yard and City Hall was discussed in those earlier appropriations. Is this an upgrade or was the work never done? The City owes us an explanation.
Also there is the question of how City Hall will get electricity in the case of a catastrophic event. Not from the the PW yard, that's for sure. The computers at City Hall will be useless, unless another generator is installed at City Hall.
All of this suggests more of the same muddled thinking. How about some clarification and transparency?
There is a generator at City Hall already. You can see it from the deck at the library. There is also one at the community center. I believe the EOC project is funded from county, state and federal dollars and is part of a county wide project.
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