Watch last night’s Sioux Falls City Council meeting and listen to why the city rejected a bidder. Their reasoning was;
A new company was formed from an old company in 2014, and the old company did bad work for the city between 2001-2008 (apparently it took the city 7 years to figure out they were a bad contractor).
They weren’t paying subcontractors on time or at all
Bonding company had to bail them out on several occasions
Old company had to break up because of multiple judgments against them.
Listening to this, and assuming we trust what the city attorney’s office was saying, it would be safe to assume they had good reasons to reject the bidder.
But read the list again. Does this sound like another contractor/developer the city is currently in cahoots with to build a $20 million dollar parking ramp? Makes you wonder what criteria was used to pick Legacy doesn’t it? Apparently NOT the same to pick contractors that do sewer work for our city. Just sayin’.
*On a side note, at the public input portion of the meeting I mentioned that the new city council needs to work on policies to bring more transparency to city government, especially with communication between the council and mayor’s office.
Before the consent agenda discussion, Erpenbach took the opportunity to chide me and say that while she served on the council they worked on transparency like getting the consent agenda published on SIRE. While this is true, I found her statement a bit ironic. As I recall it, it was Councilor Vernon Brown who spearheaded the idea with the help of than City Clerk Debra Owen, the very person Erpenbach helped push to be terminated, and did it while violating open meetings laws. Erpenbach’s ‘transparency’ hypocrisy will be her legacy.