Oak Knoll improvements, a year late and overrun cost

Imagine hiring a contractor to redo your kitchen. He speaks of new cabinets that will neatly hold your wine glasses, the plates, the A & W root beer mugs. Oh, how wonderful! He'll replace the kitchen sink and put in a new one with triple wells. And the countertop, pure granite! You could cut your food right on top, or at least cool down hot fudge. It'll only take a month, and the best thing is that it will only run you $10,000! Sign me up!
The crew arrives and starts to work. It seems to be taking a bit long to get the old cabinets off. The sink is gone and the water pipes are capped off, where's my countertop? All I see is the cheap wood framing underneath. And it's been two months!

"Well", he says, "I've encountered some unforeseen problems. The cabinets were NAILED to the wall, you don't know how hard it is when that happens. And there were water pipes IN THE WALL that went to the sink. Who would have expected THAT! The people who built your house didn't know what they were doing. Oh, the granite countertops are backordered and might get here in a month or two."

"AND...I need MORE MONEY to finish it off because of all of my problems."

What do you do? He's already taken your $10,000. Do you call the BBB and complain that this guy's a crook and your signed contract has a price on it that he's exceeding? Do you tell him to finish it off NOW for his set price? Or do you do what a lot of cities like Poway would do, just pay him whatever he wants?

Let's look at Oak Knoll Road, a raggedy road if there ever was one. It really needed to be improved, so the city of Poway decided to have it repaved, widened, put in new sidewalks, put in a big sewer line to help out the business park. So Poway plops down roughly $3,071,893 to get the job done. Construction started Oct 5, 2009, with a completion date of April 28, 2010, a mere 7 months later. WHAT A DEAL!!! A brand spankin' new road with a big sewer line, sidewalks, oooohhh....

And then what happened? "Inadequate existing road base and pavement, groundwater, and rock removal" that was somehow unanticipated, ran the costs up and delayed the completion. So the city ponies up another $450,000. Good, now the job will get done. But wait, Batman, that's not the end of it! Now, the contractors need ANOTHER $680,000 on top of this to finish it up because of "continued difficult site conditions...increase pavement overlay quantities, and other items." (italics mine) And the end date is now the end of June, 2011. Our seven month job has just turned into a 20 month job. And our $3million job is now $4.2 million. And it's still not over! The undergrounding of the utilities has not been finalized either, that's going to go until the end of July due to "coordination issues", so the final project will be done in August 2011.
22 months!!!

Unless, of course, they run into more "unforeseen" problems that delays it again and adds even more to the costs, which the city will pay, no problem. It's a shame that this isn't even out of the ordinary. The timeline triples in length, the costs increase by 37%, and no one bats an eye.

(The $ and "problems" are all listed in agenda item 4.2 in the June 21, 2011 Poway City Council agenda.)

It's a shame that these construction contractors can't be held to the same standards that home contractors and auto mechanics are held to, they violate their contracts, they could lose their license. But if the job is contracted by the city and you blow over your costs and deadlines, you'll probably get another job from the city as a reward!!!

NOTE: I've been provided with a current updated workman's comp insurance policy. The following is now out of date.
To top it off, Mountain Movers (doing the work, License number 767120), expiration date for Workers Comp is 06/01/2011 and "The license may be suspended on 07/06/2011 if the workers´ compensation insurance policy is not filed with the CSLB." according to the "Check A License" page. Who gets stuck with the insurance claims if someone gets hurt in the meantime?

Getting an ordinance to change the law: Or, rulez are for loozers

Q: How and when does an Ordinance become law?

A: Apparently whenever it's convenient to make it so.

Hmmm...

Q: Is this a violation of the city ethics standards?

A: I think so, do you? Please read on!

Let's pretend that a councilmember wants to make a change to the existing Poway code, or add a new statute to it. Here's the theoretical sequence of events for it:

The staff does the research, creates a report, and then a presentation is made to the Poway City Council at a meeting. The council discusses the report at a public council meeting. A council member can make a motion to amend the code. Another council member seconds the motion and a vote is taken. If the motion passes, a second reading is scheduled for either the next council meeting or maybe the next one after that.

In the agenda report is a statement that says when the change should be effective. Some might say that it's 30 days after approval and that means 30 days after the second reading of the change, some might be immediate.

If the first reading passed without controversy, a second reading might be placed in the consent calendar portion of the City Council Agenda, no additional staff presentation unless someone "pulls" the item and wants additional information. On extremely rare occasions, the second reading might overturn the decision made in the first reading.

It's possible that some of the changes are approved after one meeting, or that some have an urgency attached to them and are effective immediately, it just depends.

Sounds great in theory. And probably most of the time that's what happens. Is there ever an instance where something else happened? SURE, that's why this blog entry is here.

A bit of History: Back in 2005 the City of Poway installed a skate board park across the street from the Sheriff's station, near the Poway Library. Part of the rules are that kneepads and other protective gear needs to be worn. No bikes. In 2010, after complaints of vandalism, drinking, people not using pads and helmets, and of kids w. bikes, the city spent $50,000 to install a high-tech fingerprinting entry door. The kids would lift their bmx bikes over the fence surrounding the park and ride there and harass the skate boarders.

Subdivision B of Section 9.48.320 of the Poway Muni Code prohibits the presence of bicycles or scooters in a city-owned and operated skate park. Ordinance 717 will allow bikes and scooters on a limited basis, effective "thirty (30) days after the date of its passage" which is anticipated to be thirty days after the 2nd reading on June 7th. See this Poway site for a description of the ordinance.

"Ok, Joe, but I still don't see a problem, don't you like kids? Where's the alleged ethics violation?"

Good questions, but let me provide a bit more background info. Councilmember Jim Cunningham shepherded this item. His two sons ride bmx bikes.

In February, Cunningham announced that he would meet w. a local property owner in an attempt to get him to sell his property for a bmx park. Cunningham said that he would work to "speed approvals and permitting to get the park built" according to this Poway Patch article.

The sale didn't happen and the bmx track was not built off Garden Road.

Then a few months later in April it was announced that there were going to be limited Wednesday afternoon bmx-only sessions at the skate park starting on May 25th.

And lo and behold, the sessions actually DID start on May 25th, to great reviews!

That's good news for anyone who wants to ride bikes in the skate park. Personally I think it's a great idea and should have been done years ago. I don't ride skate boards or bmx bikes at all, maybe 40 years ago, but not now.

A little more info: As of May 25th the ordinance has not yet passed the 2nd reading to the City Council, and the 30 days after that hasn't happened yet either, yet bmx riders are merrily riding on Wednesdays.

The first reading for Ordinance 717 was on May 17th. The second reading is scheduled for June 7th. Assuming it passes with flying colors 5-0 as it did on the first reading to the Council, the first bmx riders shouldn't be in the skate park, legally, until July 13th, the first Wednesday after the 30 day waiting period. So the original "thou shalt not ride bikes in the skate park" IS STILL THE LAW until July 7th.

Maybe it's a mistake? Surely the city must have passed some temporary waiver to allow this to happen before the municipal code was modified to allow the bikes? Nope. I emailed the city about this, thinking I didn't understand the process of getting ordinances to be "legal". The response was, and I'm putting this into words as I understand them, "Sure, the ordinance hasn't passed yet but gosh, half the summer would be over and the bikers wouldn't be able to use the skate park if we followed the rulez! We could have made this an emergency to get this done faster but that's too much work!"

So now the Poway City staff knows it's not yet legal to use bikes in the skate park, and are directing the senior recreation supervisor to hold the sessions, and of course, paying part-time people to supervise this all. I don't know, but isn't telling someone to violate the law some sort of ethics violation? What does the Poway Code of Ethics state?

"The purpose of this Code of Ethics is to set a standard of conduct for all elected officials, officers, employees, members of committees and commissions, and volunteers for the City of Poway." "I promote consistency, equity and non-discrimination in public agency decision-making." "I avoid actions that might cause the public to question my independent judgment."

Last and most important: "Elected officials, officers, employees, members of committees and commissions, and volunteers shall comply with the laws of the nation, the State of California and the City of Poway in the performance of their public duties. These laws include, but are not limited to: the United States and California constitutions; the Poway Municipal Code..."

To me, having City employees knowingly violate the Poway Municipal Code and directing staff to do so also is a blatant violation of the ethics codes of the city. Sure, the skate park ordinance will pass 5-0 on the second reading too, the kids will have fun riding their bikes there, but if the City chooses to ignore the law by not needing to wait for a second scheduled reading (and the waiting period), what's to stop them from doing this again and again when they decide it fits their needs? You can bet that if I wanted a grading permit to bulldoze my lot and I started plowing between the first and second reading of the permit, I'd be fined right and left since the permit wasn't valid yet.

But, that's just me, a common citizen, not a city staff member nor a city council member, and remember, rulez are for loozers...