Some may ask why the city even has an engineering department. Well, for starters they identify projects and determine the best way forward to tackle the project. At least they used to.
Building anything big like a bridge, a swimming pool or an Events Center, you likely would use several subcontractors. The contractor chose to do the bridge project awarded by the council last night on a 6-2 vote (Neitzert and Starr dissenting) will likely have to job out different subcontractors to complete the work that includes demolition, utility work and actually constructing the bridge. The engineering department could have easily broke this project up to make it more appealing to bidders and probably would have saved the city millions.
It wasn’t just the incompetence of the administration and the city council that approved this blindly, it was an utter failure of the Public Works department to NOT take another approach to this to save taxpayers money.
Then there are the questionable and cozy relationships certain contractors have with the city, and that was on full display last night when the council approved this 100% cost overrun with only ONE bid. (Councilors Merkouris and Barranco also changed their votes the last minute I’m assuming to save the Mayor from casting the tie-breaker, which he would have broke and approved).
The precedent set last night by this council and administration was not good and the genie is now fully out of the bottle. Infrastructure projects in Sioux Falls are going to become very, very expensive moving forward.
It’s never fun to be blindsided with extra costs but it becomes amusing to watch this city administration so quickly approve and rubber stamp the additional spending. Who else thinks that maybe over drinks and dinner that someone high up in this administration promised a pretty new bridge so this new gateway to the Cherepa development will blend better with their area architecture? How many citizens rarely go downtown or use this bridge and really don’t care?
Take it apart so it can’t be fixed? Use more federal levee money like Huether did to build the Denty?
Cherapa and Steel should pay for all of this. They are the ones directly benefiting from it. Because, to tax them over this, how would it be any different than to tax an establishment over a facade?
We live in times when one government entity can find an additional 10 million for a bridge, while teacher pay is lacking from another entity… What matters more here?
Meanwhile in Pierre, they are more worried about kids going to a drag show, than teacher pay…. But aren’t they worried about the kids? How many kids do you know actually go to a drag show other than the one in Marion? While teachers in Turner County and elsewhere are not paid enough to teach our dear children.
( and Woodstock adds: “Say, what if dragsters (‘Is that what you call them?’) promised to dance on the new bridge, do you think that would kill its funding?”…. (“Or, how about if they dragged on the bridge with like a ’69 GTO Judge?”… ))
My parents never took me to a drag show (Actually, my older brother once took me to Thunder Valley.), but they did take me to a movie in Sioux City once. And I turned out okay 🙂 …. It was PG at best. Starring Tony Curtis and Sharon Tate: ‘Don’t Make Waves’…. WOW! #EyeOpener #DirtyMudSlides #NeedNotDragMeToTheShow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10GBHvn-eEM
“They should do a sequel to ‘Don’t Make Waves'”… “But then again, sequels are never as good”… (… “Maybe they could put Dua in it, however, that would definitely help”…. 🙂 ) ….
But didn’t the Bunker Ramp cost $21 million, too? Before you know it, it will be $21 million here, $21 million there, and then before you know it we’ll be talking about some real money:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJZddQ7pcC0
#ABridgeToSomewhere #EastBank$26Million? #EverettDirksenRIP
“Say, how much were we going to pay to hire a Chief of Culture?”…. “About a 100 grand a year?”… “Well, then maybe we could hold off on that one for like 100 years to pay for the additional bridge costs”…. 🙂