By Randy Kugler
The City Manager did not provide any updates on the Classic Street project at the February Council meeting and the Council had no questions on the project’s progress.
City officials seem reluctant to discuss anything that they believe may reflect negatively on their job performance. Consider the following: 1) ln December, the City Manager stated that project infrastructure should be completed by the end of the month or shortly thereafter. No updates on why that forecast has proven to not be even remotely accurate. 2) Given that approximately $75,000 has been expended to date in legal fees to defend the decision to enter into the second round of bidding after the initial low project bid was rejected, an update to explain the project will now be over budget and additional cost cutting measures will need to be taken would seem appropriate. 3) The City Manager in May explained that she rejected the low bid for the project due to cost. She then stated in a recent Headlight Herald interview that her reason was due to cost AND document discrepancies. When I asked Councilor Hart for an explanation of these “discrepancies” that the City Manager is now publicly referring to and should citizens expect there to be additional new reasons disclosed by the City for why the initial bids were rejected, I was told that the matter could not be discussed.
City officials offering cryptic public explanations of their actions, spending exorbitant amounts of money on legal fees and then telling us they cannot talk about it sounds reminiscent of how the situation with Mayor Simmons was handled.
Twice in recent months upon a review of the monthly Bills For Approval in the Council packet, I have pointed out to Councilor Hart that billings for the Classic Street project were placed in the wrong Fund. This inattention in performing routine oversight in important administrative responsibilities related to Classic Street was also apparent when no discussion or questions were raised during any previous Council meetings as to why the low project bid was rejected, why $475,000 of engineering and legal advice was ignored, why not a single dollar of available TLT revenue was not added to the project budget to give the community the safest and most structurally robust project possible. Taken together, these situations would suggest that the Council lacks either the interest or understanding to administer this project and will unanimously approve whatever is placed before them by the City Manager or claim that the Council has no role in decisions being made on the project.
One could conclude that Councilors are privately receiving project updates and prefer not to reveal what they know in a public meeting. An alternative explanation is that the City Manager is not sharing these details with the Council. Neither option is a characteristic of open and transparent governance.