So, I’m sitting here wondering which bonehead elected official is going to pull the next Stupid Council Trick, when I opened an email from North Miami Councilman Scott Galvin. I said, “Steph, wait no more and look no further.” As always, these stories just fall in my lap when I’m minding my own business.
Mr. Galvin’s newsletter first talked about the moonlighting CRA Coordinator, Andre Pierre crony Lesly Prudent. That alone is pretty scandalous!
Next he wrote about yet another issue in North Miami, as follows:
CRA Approves $99K for Cleaning Sidewalks Installed Just Months Ago (VIDEO!)
$99,000 to Clean North Miami Sidewalks?
In 2011, the City finished installing brand new red-and-white brick sidewalks from NE 6 Avenue to NE 9 Avenue.Now, only months after the project was completed, the City Council, acting as the CRA Board, has voted 4-1 to spend over $99,000 to clean them.
You might guess I voted against it.City Staff is in the process of finalizing the contract for the work.I walked the entirety of the area and found the sidewalks to be in almost pristine condition. The only scuffs were in front of a gas station and can be removed without pressure-cleaning the entire sidewalk.It is a waste of taxpayers’ dollars to spend so much cleaning new sidewalks. Certainly, there are more important projects on which we should focus.
Whoa, Dude! NINETY NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS to clean a sidewalk for three blocks? WTF?
To truly get a feel for how insanely ridiculous this expense is, please watch the short video Councilman Galvin produced.
The company with the winning bid is IMECO, Inc., which is a Florida corporation. Even after extensive dirt digging, I have been unable to find any connection at all between the principles of the company and any of the North Miami elected officials, or more importantly, CRA COORDINATOR LESLY PRUDENT. Unlike some of the North Miami Council members and staff, the sidewalk cleaning company appears to be legitimate and above board.
Darn! To be honest with you, I was hoping to figure out a hidden reason that the city is paying such an exorbitant amount of money for what seems to be an unnecessary job. Another NM “Slush Fund” would have been a really scandalous story.
Other than the fact that, at a price of $99,400.00, the cost of this “sidewalk cleaning” was just under the $100,000.00 limit the city can expend without the Council having to approve it. Alas, this doesn’t seem to be about anything more than North Miami tax dollars being flushed down the drain. As usual.
Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”
Above and beyond the fact that a recently completed job should have been left in a clean and reasonable condition, the cost of the cleaning can easily be figured if you divide the cost by the number of square feet there are to be cleaned.
JAC
This is an interesting story because it’s viewed from a context narrower than the situation itself.
In the CRA Agenda file there are various proposals made from different contractors. The first thing that comes to mind is rate scamming.
There is more than one proposal for the project, the company that won obviously had the lowest proposal.
How is it that a firm run by someone arrested two years ago for attempting to bribe commissioners had the lowest bid of them all? Coincidence? How did the other companies even find out about the option to bid.
This is always the most crucial step of bid-rigging. If a job costs 40k, a business insider can essentially pay off his competitors to propose such high markups that his slightly lower high mark up is the best bid.
The other two proposals (there are only three which is an annoying and pathetic kind of legal standard) are itemized, submitted by pricing professionals with no statement made. The winning bid by Imeco is not itemized, and instead is a letter.
But the context of the situation is really why this was put for proposal to begin with. If of the whole street only a few blocks are problematic why not clean those rather than the entire street?
If one wanted to be sure nothing suspicious was going on a few things should be discovered. First how did any of these companies find out about the bid, was it a fair and open process, or was it manipulated to favor a certain proposal. Who won the bid and what if any validity was their to his 2009 arrest, or any previous arrests related to fraud.
http://northmiamicra.org/docs/091112-CRABoardAgenda.pdf
Funny you should mention this. Stand by for the latest to be published shortly. 🙄
one final thing I noticed just now looking a few more times at similarities and differences in the three proposals. Imeco is proposing their services in square ft, and the other companies in square yards.
So if his proposal is accurate he’ll take about as much money as the competitors for 10% of the work 😉
on pg 77 of this document from August 2011, Faustin Denis is listed as a contact for APEC group located in Atlanta Georgia.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/90172649/Miami-Dade-County-Department-of-Small-Business-Development-