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Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Steve Sisolak
Sun Archives
- Public works on the cheap (10-9-2009)
Beyond the Sun
In what one Clark County commissioner called a classic example of the sometimes ridiculous way government operates, the county solicited bids for a project only to decide Tuesday to do the work in-house at a higher cost.
But the part that really threw Commissioner Steve Sisolak — the only commissioner who voted against doing the work in-house — and the bidders was the admission by Richard Mendes, Clark County Water Reclamation District general manager, that he intended to contract for manhole inspections only if the bids were way below in-house costs. He said he sought the bids to establish a baseline cost.
Mendes contended that because government expenses rise more slowly than private sector expenses, it would cost the district less in the long term to do the work itself.
Sisolak, a businessman, scoffed at that. “This is the first time I’ve heard someone make the argument that we can control our costs better than outside companies,” he said.
The county has about 40,000 manholes, which the county calls “access structures” because “manhole” is politically incorrect. Whatever the preferred name, the first wave of inspections will look at 1,827 of them. Inspectors use cameras and other equipment to identify structural damage in and around the covers needing repair.
The district will need to buy the equipment and plans to promote two people to do the inspections, leaving two entry-level positions to be filled.
Hoffman Southwest Corp. submitted the lowest eligible bid to do the first wave of inspections — $394,835, or $216 per manhole.
Mendes said the county’s in-house cost is $238 per manhole.
So awarding the bid would have saved valley residents and business owners at least $40,194 on the inspections. If the work were to be performed on all manholes at that rate, the Water Reclamation District would save more than $800,000 by using Hoffman Southwest if the company’s costs remained the same.
The district is funded solely through fees paid by all water customers. None of the county’s general fund, which comes largely from sales and property taxes, pays for district operations.
Sisolak called the district’s approach to the contract and bidding processes “ridiculous.” It “takes away the whole argument of the free enterprise system,” he said.
Mendes argued that short-term projects are more appropriate for outsourcing. Long-term projects such as this — the first 1,827 manholes are expected to take up to two years to inspect — are better suited to in-house work.
E. Lee Bernick, interim dean of UNLV’s Greenspun School of Public Affairs, said in some cases that is true. To figure out which services to privatize, government often looks first at equipment costs. Government might not want to get into the long-term business of garbage collection, for instance, because of the enormous expense of buying and maintaining garbage trucks.
“If a service doesn’t cost very much to get into, it may be better for government to do it,” Bernick said.
Handling work in-house can sometimes be a better way for governments to go because a private contractor can often tie government’s hands, he said.
“It isn’t always the case that the private sector is more cost-effective,” he added. “Right now, they might be coming in with a low bid and less than what government can do. They might be willing to do that because the economy stinks.”
But in two years if things pick up “they might say, ‘I don’t need to do this anymore and if you want me to do it, you have to pay me more,’” Bernick said.
Commissioner Larry Brown, chairman of the district’s board of trustees, said he sided with Mendes because “when it comes to water and wastewater, that infrastructure is fundamental to what we do as local government.”
One rejected bidder, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear his company could lose future chances to win county projects, used the same word as Sisolak: “ridiculous.”
The company spokesman was stunned that a county official would say the bids were likely to be rejected from the outset, given the expense for the county to bid out a project and for the companies that responded with bids.
“I have a hard time believing that they are that arrogant,” the bidder said. “They don’t have to go through these kind of gymnastics to find out where the numbers should be. You can get reasonable estimates without going through all this.
“It’s really off the wall,” he added.
Free enterprise when it comes to keeping the government growing with Collins and Reid running the commissioner's office is unheard of. These two buffoons want nothing more than more government and less capitalism to further their social welfare programs and to line their own pocket books.
The cost to the taxpayers will be far more than the 40k they've indicated. When it is all said and done the cost to us will be in excess of 200k. They're government employees and they'll take their sweet time, they have no need to control costs let alone get the job done timely. They are inspecting and as they encounter issues it will take meeting after meeting after meeting with senior managers then engineers and have yet another meeting to come up a design fix.
To hide the costs they'll drum up a new cost code to code their time so when it is all said and done it would appear on the surface than they saved money when in fact they've sucked us dry.
If I were low bidder I would take the County to court and challenge their decision. This is not in the best interest of the taxpayers and goes against all principals protecting us the taxpayer. And we wonder why we're broke.
Government out of control. Like the decision on road construction, cost is not the deciding factor. It's all about politics and which union is pulling the strings.
Mendes said they will promote two employees to complete the work? WTH? How about making them learn how to do the job, since we know they haven't done it, then give them a raise. Typical CC pay them more for on the job training. I'd like to know if Mendes has more than a high school diploma and has any business running a department. If I was a company that had wasted time putting together a bid, I'd be pretty PO'd!
Thanks a lot Clark County. Not only are you wasting 40k by deciding to do this work in-house, you've wasted further taxpayer dollars by putting it out for bid. Not to mention wasting the bidder's dollars. Thanks a lot! I hope Mendes is stripped of his decision-making powers.
I FEEL THAT THOSE WHO MADE THE DECISION TO TAKE THE BID WITH THE HIGHER BID SHOULD PAY FOR THE DIFFERENCE OUT OF THEIR SALARY.
THEY MADE THE DECISION AND THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COSTS
Typical government wasteful practice by promoting the incompetent current employees to fill up choice positions. This problem is all over the government, instead of hiring bright outside worker with fresh innovative mind, they promote their friends to fill up higher positions. How can you attract a bright, hard charging new worker to fill up the lower position vacated by the newly promoted worker. Guys, if you want to improve the system, hire new competent worker to bring in new ways of improving the system. But then again, they might expose the good old ways of doing less work for more pay.
GREAT ARTICLE. The media needs to do more to expose this kind of government waste and insanity.
This is absolutely crazy. Only one commissioner saw this as "ridiculous"? That is ridiculous!
Since when could the county do ANYTHING more cost effective than the private sector. And it makes a lot of sense to get some dean at UNLV(another person at the government trough) explaining why it is a good idea. Maybe we should hire his department to do a study on it, and he can make a few more bucks. I don't know if this is a democrat - republican thing, because the entire commission is democratic, including Sisolak, who saw this as ridiculous. I think it the commission just doesn't get it.
I suppose the government employees are happy, because they get a few more members to pay dues and get those great benefits that none of the rest of us can afford.
Wake up. Start protecting our dollars and not building the government bureaucracy.
WHAT A HYPOCRITE! Sisolak is the major proponent to reject the Fisher bid on the northern beltway project in favor of the union Las Vegas Paving. So hiring a worker at the County at a higher cost = bad. Hiring a union paving contractor at a $5,000,000 higher cost = good? Sisolak cannot claim the fiscal responsibility mantle.
Wake up people! This guy is the biggest grandstander on the County Commissioner since Erin Kenny. He will do whatever he can to get his oversized melon on TV. He even skipped out of the County Commission meeting to do TV interviews, missing out on a number of votes.
Randy,
First, who cares if someone grandstands if they are right in what they are saying? And if you watch the meeting, you see Sisolak, as a new commissioner, asks a lot of questions but he does not grandstand. He pulled this issue off of a consent agenda. Consent agenda items are those that usually fly by with no questions. Good for him.
Second, I look at his vote against the county differently when compared to the Fisher issue. If people think he was being pro-union, this vote flies in the face of that belief.
Sisolak is not my commissioner, i don't know the guy, but i do know politics and government. I thought this was a good bit of pointing out a questionable government maneuver.
Sisolak is no different than the rest of the buffoons serving, just another idiot sucking off our taxes without any accountability.
If he and the rest of the elected officials were doing their jobs we wouldn't be in the condition we're in. They have neglected their duties and we as taxpayers should file a qui tam against them for not doing the job they were hired to do in the first place, spending our taxpayer dollars wisely and not waste our money.
Awarding this project to staff is the dumbest moves they've done outside of the pending lawsuits for not awarding the project to Fisher. When it is all said and done the county will pay Fisher and LVP their lost overhead and profits plus costs and attorney's fees, this could reach in excess of $30 million. If the low bidder files a lawsuit stopping the county from self performing the work then they too would be entitled to costs and will perform the work and we the taxpayer would realize savings for not having the county staff self perform the work.
The county has a duty to us the taxpayer, they can't self perform work knowing it will cost more money. We already know that they will spend more than what was represented, so why would any of you support this kind of choice? We're broke and they will put us further in debt.
This reminds me of Ventura County, they won't award more projects so they don't have to lay off 82 county employees. It is about self preservation of large government verse free enterprise. Public Employees have no desire to control costs, it is taxpayer dollars and they consider us to be a blank check, unlimited source of free funds.
So no one here thinks the cost per manhole is "ridiculous"? What are these people doing during an inspection, replating them? X-raying them like they're key components of a nuclear power plant? Documenting the lousy placement that creates a nice distance between the cover and the roadway, so our car suspensions get a free makeover every couple hundred miles of driving? Folks, they're talking about spending over $200 to look at a single, circular piece of metal. How long does that take, a couple days? Because by my math, you're either paying your people a hell of a lot to look at a cover, or you're taking forever to do it. A cover costs only about $40. You could replace the whole thing for maybe $150. Why isn't anyone talking about that? And Mendes should be canned...any public manager who wastes the time of private business in order to get "free" cost estimates is a moron and should be fired.
which the county calls "access structures" because "manhole" is politically incorrect.
That alone makes me laugh!!!! I guess they don't want to offend women or gay men.
E. Lee Bernick, interim dean of UNLV's Greenspun School of Public Affairs, said in some cases that is true.
"If a service doesn't cost very much to get into, it may be better for government to do it," Bernick said.
Of course he's going to say that. He is a government employee.
manhole is politically incorrect
Possible replacement names: womanhole,lovethishole, whatahole, theirhole, ourhole, onebighole, govermenthole, and isthatyourhole?
Sounds like "Randy" has a personal issue with Sisolak.
I watched this on TV(channel 4). Sisolak is the only one with the guts to stand up to Mendez, and Larry Brown who was the chair agreed to waste taxpayer money. The explanation was absurd, and Sisolak didn't let them off the hook. Watch the replay on the internet and decide for yourselves. I don't know the guy, but at least on this issue he did the right thing. I can't see how asking questions is grandstanding. If he stepped out to do an interview, I hope it was on this, because people need to know.
Congratulations to the Sun for exposing this. Where is the RJ on this? Do they even send a reporter to the meeting? Seems like the LV Sun beats the RJ to the punch everytime.
unclegig wrote "wasteful practice by promoting the incompetent current employees to fill up choice positions.... "...instead of hiring bright outside worker with fresh innovative mind"
Really? So all current employees are incompetent? You know all the current employees? You know many current employees? You know ANY current employees?
I know people are frustrated and scared, I am too. However, you should never state these things about "regular" working people when you do not know, just because you have sour grapes! Maybe some at the top are wasteful and incompetent, but the majority at the bottom are people just like you and me - trying to get by!!
The "incompetent current employees" lose their jobs and the "bright outside worker with fresh innovative mind" will be hired and then people such as you will be back on here complaining about them in a year!
Right now, saving $10 or even $100 should be considered..since when does our town Government have $40k extra to spend?
Promoting 2 people to manage the job? Why promote at all - it raises their salary (which we don't have the cash for) and why are they now qualified all of a sudden?? THIS IS TOTALLY LAME !!!
The bidders are P.O.'d because this was going to be the easiest money they ever made! $400,000 was the LOW BID for the "first wave" of inspections.
No guarantee that this company would have gotten the bid, of course. It may have gone to a higher bidder.
And down the line, the bidding on subsequent "waves" of inspections could certainly be higher if economic conditions change. 400 grand. To peek under manhole covers. Seriously. I know of a company that was going to bid on these, and the guy was LAUGHING at how much money there was to be made off of this deal.
So, before you lambaste the County for doing the work "in house", keeping County Employees working, consider that this may actually be a wise move.
Sisolak.....
http://www.airlines.org/NR/rdonlyres/9CA...
Cost TO taxpayers and all Las Vegas visitors = BILLIONS $$
gmag39:
LOL, only a moron could wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills up first. Show us a county employee let alone any public employee who can manage costs and build anything for a lesser amount that private can?
You bet the private company would make money, that's what they're to do, make money. Unlike your counterparts, they have only one goal, suck money from us who pay taxes to justify their lazy pathetic choices.
For the commissioners to make such a poor choice is just another example why they need to be voted out of office. I for one hope some law firm steps up and files suit against them for not doing the job they're hired to do, protect the taxpayers and spend our money wisely. These buffoons have done nothing but spend our money foolishly and we're bankrupt because of their poor choices.
If we were to submit bills to them and they'd paid and it was later discovered that we were paid for services not rendered, we would be sued under The False Claims Act. Why can't they be held to the same standards and we sue them for not doing what they're hired for?
gmag, pathetic. Only word that comes to mind that won't get my comment removed.
wow. It would seem the neo-con's are angry.
That is SUCH a shock! 2hot, he's gonna stroke out one of these fine days. He has so much anger! THAT must suck. getalife, if the best you can do is "I'd call ya this bad name but I can't, but rest assured it's a BAD one," then you obviously have no valid argument.
Some of these comments are crazy. This discussion has nothing to do with Sisolak.
As for "gmag39". If we followed your logic, the county would hire contractors and build all the roads and buildings themselves. They could do everything in-house and eliminate the outsourcing of ANY and ALL jobs.
That appears to be the danger in what is happening in this case.
gmag...... look up the meaning of pathetic... you exhibit every aspect of that word.
Paying higher taxes, wasting tax payers money and using contractors as shills are signs of an elitist mentality that pervades modern government.
I would be willing to bet that the contractors would be hesitant to re-bid this project down the road based on their treatment by Rory and his ilk.
You are so high minded why don't you just cut a check for the difference, oh wait, food stamps and w.i.c. certificates aren't really money.
Pathetic..... look it up.
Geez Wally, you don't have to get sore at a guy.
Well, just pay each bidder $500,000 each.
That would be fair in this fantasy land called Las Vegas.
The idiots at the water district should buy an estimating book next time they are looking for numbers. What? They can't use calculators?
2nd dumbest city in America.
While I agree with the majority that feel it makes more sense to award the contract to the low bidder, there is one other consideration that may make a difference.
If the labor already exists in the way of county employees. and they have time available to do the work, then its either pay them do something or pay them to do nothing.
It would make no sense to pay someone to do the work when there may already be staff on board to do the work. When you factor out the labor and benefits cost that county employees are going to get regardless whether or not they inspect manholes or not, it'll probably be cheaper to put em to work!
I don't get the promotion angle... Don't they already have supervisors?
If he knew what the voting results were going to be before he cast his, why not vote negative? The measure still passes and he looks like a "friend" to the taxpayer. Politics.
gmag, I appologize for letting my high handing emotions get the better of me.
Banter isn't supposed to be toxic.
I can tell by the posts that the majority of the people commenting, have absolutely no idea what is involved in inspecting the "access structures".
Do you not pay attention when you drive around the city?
Every job being done in the public right of way must have permits (fees paid) and traffic control plans submitted and approved. You cannot just drive around and drop a GPS on it and move on to the next one. That would work until the first texting driver ran into the back end of a county truck (YOUR RIGHT)
Yeah, the metal lids all look okay. Let's say for instance that we were to dig a hole in the street and put a cement pad at the bottom. Then we stood a person in the hole and put a metal lid on their head, even with the driving surface. The wear on the metal lid is neglible but I would venture to guess that the person (structure) holding the lid up may wear out.
The lack of knowledge in relation to this story could fill a book with OSHA regs, liability, on and on and on .....
If you want your leaders to hear what you have to say ... quit crying "wolf"!!!
I watched the debate and Mendes made a good arguement. Most people miss the point. If he had not bid out the project and had only submitted a cost analysis, he would have been called out to explain himself. Now he has done a competitive bid and cost analysis, he has covered himself and the County and has made a good arguement for keeping it in house. Anyone in the contracting business knows that competitive bidding is almost always more expensive than closely monitored time and materials costing. The bid would require the checking of a certain specific group of manholes identified in the bid, up to the number in the bid. The County can inspect manholes that have been identified through complaints (from the public)or in other words on an "as needed" basis which helps to control the initial outlay.
They are going to pay the employees more by advancing their pay level, not promoting them and there was no discussion on replacing them which would in fact have a long term cost that would have to be figured in to the estimated cost. So, if you could get 4 employees for only 40,000 more than 2 employees, what a bargain!! (They are not hiring 2 more employees)
Good for the county to stick up for its employees.
Government jobs pay well and have good benefits. This is what all workers deserve.
Giving the job to corporations, who pay minimum wage, no benefits and screw employees out of overtime is WRONG for people and society.
Workers who have more money SPEND IT (a proven economic fact) and this is what we need to get our economy going again.
Just giving minimum wages to the workers and the rich executives keeping all the profits for themselves does no good for the economy.
Again the economic facts are that RICH executive DO NOT SPEND their money to stimulate the economy.
They just buy more property and stock and this only makes the US more of a Feudalistic system where the rich own everything.
getalife...
Accepted.
Any developer/builder who's had the pleasure of working with the Clean Water Team in the past couple of years can attest to the CCWSD's adoption of a full employment approach to all things sewage.
As a developer/builder who's worked in government and who's processed not less than 20 moderate/large projects in metro LV and a comparable number in several other western states, I've always been particularly impressed with Clark County and it's personnel. Government can and often does complete work in as cost effective a manner (or even more so) than private industry. Unfortunately, my recent experience with the CCWRD has put a significant dent in that perception.
For what it's worth, if it's so cost effective for the CCWRD to get into the inspection business now (when private industry is willing to do the work below CCWRD cost) then what's to keep the CCWRD from doing so after the private contractor has more profitable options?
Seems the CCWRD is intent on having our public infrastructure process more bull waste than human waste.
FearNot
Good point. They could "head hunt" later as effectively as anyone in the private sector, especially after this slow economy.
Finally, a few people that grasp the process; Mutt, FearNot etc.
A hard bid would be the reason to laugh all the way to the bank. T&M should be more effective since there will be many of those structures that will need just a cursory look and found to be stable. Grade rings,grout, asphalt patch,permits, traffic control etc. done by the entity that has inside knowledge of the process required. Do you think if this work was hard bid that they would give back the average cost per if nothing was found? And, if done right, we'll have a couple more people in the CCPW with confined space certs. Right On!!