Commission fails due diligence on RO project

It was evident from the final vote and figures presented at Wednesday afternoon’s meeting which by the way, failed the required 24 hour notice period… that city leadership failed to exercise due diligence to insure the best deal for rate payers.

Instead of encouraging public participation and scrutiny, the city manager, after admitting a credibility gap existed between residents and city management… lost her cool saying “this is insane, this is insane… accusing us of malfeasance.” But this off the wall and out of context protest of innocence only added fuel to the rising public awareness that this city manager is not well connected and not what she presented herself to be in the beginning.

The final RO deal

The first mistake was going back and making the same mistake over again. Late in the game, commissioner Golden reversed her position and succeeded in leading the commission majority into putting Mock Roos in charge of the bidding… again. The claim was that we wouldn’t have time to put it out to open bidding… the convenient conclusion being, that we had to let Mock Roos control the project. Didn’t we learn that leaving Mock Roos in charge of bidding means prices through the roof? After all that was what shut the project down in August of 2007... the PRICE for the plant which was at least 32% higher than best industry figures showed.

By opening the bidding process, Lake Worth could benefit from more creative engineering designs that could lower the price. Layne Christensen estimated our plant should only cost about 17 million at a time when Mock Roos came in at 22.6 million. And what happened to the 30% cost reduction because of the economy?

All Mock Roos has done is to lower their original 32% inflated price by 25% to what Layne Christensen and others estimated (17 million) when the economy was peaking out. In this economy even Mock Roos acknowledged that a 30% reduction in costs across the board was typical these days. If that is true, then the price for the RO plant completion should have come in at 30% less than the 17 million average cost (before the economy flipped out) which means we should be paying somewhere around 12 million… NOT 17 million for the RO plant and process for 4.5 mgd.

The second problem with due diligence failure has to do with vision and forethought in behalf of the people. As part of a strategy to bring the RO back, I had in depth meetings with South Florida water management, RO companies, professionals, contractors, and consultants. I also met with Lois Frankel and staff and that generated an interest in a sister city mutual cooperation idea that could have resulted in WPB investing in our RO system for some of their future water needs… in return for a better deal now on their water which we will need until the RO project is finished. Commissioner Golden was delighted with the progression of events. And there were other communities that might be interested as well… but these opportunities were never reported to the commission for further discussion.

So in effect, we sized, financed, and concluded an agreement for a massive 30 million dollar taxpayer project with no forethought or long term vision. That’s not to say that a 4.5 mgd plant isn’t a good thing… I have said from the beginning it must be a minimum of 4.5 mgd for good reasons. What I am saying is that we paid too much for it by repeating known mistakes and didn’t seize lucrative opportunities to lower the cost to rate payers. Again, inaccurate, incomplete and improperly timed information played a part… but by far the commission majority’s over zealous willingness in pleasing the city manager led to this outcome.