Comment Up
The City continues to put costly items on Consent Agenda for immediate approval by the city commission. It continues to send out RFP's on various purchases, sometimes without the commission's knowledge such as the RFP for an exclusive caterer at our Casino.
Tonight it is for the purchase of various three-phase pad mount transformers, single-phase pad mount distribution transformers, and overhead distribution transformers for a whopping total of $307,247 for Lake Worth Utilities.
The Motion:
1) I move to approve/disapprove the purchase from HD Supply Corporation in an amount not to exceed $151,790 for three-phase pad mount transformers, the purchase from Howard Industries in an
amount not to exceed $46,479 for pad mount distribution transformers and the purchase from HD Supply Corporation in an amount not to exceed $108,978 for overhead distribution transformers.
As the commission is ultimately responsible and is supposedly a watchdog of our money, is it not reasonable to have any expenditure over $15,000 under New Business so that there can be discussion and explanation of the expenditure? We couldn't even hire an Internal Auditor, Robert Marksmeier, whose focus was going to be on our Utility.
It's still a black hole.
This is typical of Staff and has led to substantial cost over runs in the past. The game is to put in for a part of the total CIP Budget approved cost and then when cost overruns appear, the Commission can do nothing but approve the over run or stop a project before completion. Of course the Commission has to approve the cost overrun because if they don’t, the inoperative CIP is without any value at all or when then new CIP Budget is approved, it is for substantially more than the original Budget.
ReplyDeleteBTW—don’t some of these Line Items sound strikingly like the “excess inventory” we sold at $.30 on the dollar?