Sioux Falls City Councilor Neitzert on the EC siding settlement

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Greg goes into great detail explaining the settlement;

The recent events center settlement revealed that we received $485,004 in cash and forgiveness of bills owed to the contractors. The other $514,996 of the settlement was in the form of a write-down of the ‘contractor contingency’ which is a block of money that the owner (the City) allows the contractor (Mortenson) to access during construction to cover eventualities out of the control of the contractor (i.e. a subcontractor walks off the job, raw material prices spike, etc). At the end of the project, there was $1,524,402 left in the Contractor Contingency fund. Note this is OUR money (it never went to the contractor – it was in our bank account). At the end of the project, industry documents state, and in fact our contract states, that we retain that unused contingency. Now the city asserts it is not ‘our money’ because the contractor could access it. They assert that per the contract, if we were to find a ‘latent’ (hidden and not seen but NOT based on contractor negligence or fraud) defect within the 10 year statute of repose (time limit in South Dakota to find a defect that was hidden and go after the contractor) that they would have the right to access the contractor contingency fund to fix it.

Greg finishes up by saying this;

To be clear I have found no evidence of corruption or malfeasance, at best it was only an error in judgement/bad decision. It may not have even been that.

I disagree, I have felt there should be a Federal investigation into the entire EC building process. I also don’t agree it was an error in judgement. I think the mayor knew what was going on and purposely ignored it out of selfishness to get the project done on time and under budget, which will cost us more in the long run if extensive repairs need to be made.

Why do I think it wasn’t just a bad decision? Because most people in leadership who have integrity and ethics ADMIT to those bad decisions and apologize instead of continuing to lie. And the lies continue to pile up.

Greg did do a fantastic job of explaining the issue, and by NO means he is sugar coating the events.

As for the study that is supposed to happen, I get the feeling more and more that the city is going to have a tough time finding someone willing to point the finger at an internationally acclaimed contractor for bad work. And even if they do, there isn’t much we can go after Mortenson for. As Greg pointed out, it was clearly the adminstration’s fault for allowing the work to be done to begin with. The company that does the study will essentially be asking us to pay them for a conclusion that will put taxpayers on the hook for the repairs. Would you want that job?

I think a group of volunteer local contractors should be putting an advisory report together instead. I know, pie in the sky.