The city of Sioux Falls, once again, is starting to crow about how they are saving taxpayer’s money;
On Tuesday, city officials opened bids for the project and learned that building the new span will cost $8.4 million – about $1.6 million below what the city estimated.
Really, except for this tidbit of course;
Bonus: If construction is finished in 140 days, Cramer & Associates earns a $250,000 bonus. If the company finishes early, it will receive $10,000 for each day, up to 25 days, meaning Cramer & Associates could earn $500,000 in incentives.
And something else left completely out of the story – we are borrowing the money to build the bridge instead of just taking it out of the 2nd penny budget which we should have done to begin with. So how much in interest will we be paying?
I suggest all residents of Sioux Falls don’t believe a damn thing the Munson administration has to say in their last months.
Wonder if the crack Engineering Dept. at the City came up with the higher estimate?
Who cares, we are not saving money, that and we are sending our taxdollars to Iowa instead of using local labor and construction crews.
I suspect, because of federal money, they had to go out for ‘competitive bids’ on this one. Munson developers are used to corrupt ‘typical bidding’ and found they were not capable of competing against honest reputable companies. I’d rather see money go out of state than into Munson syndicate accounts.
And ironically, guess where these Iowegian construction workers will be staying when they are building the bridge? RV’s.
This is a classic case of “inflate the estimates, so you look like a hero when the bid comes in lower”.
They don’t get a pat on the back for “saving money”, they get a kick the rear for being horrible at estimating costs. Remember the storm sewer debacle? They missed that one by a few million too… but that was in the other direction.
A monkey can pound on a calculator and come up with numbers as accurate as these clowns.
Phillips to the Falls is my favorite; the $1.5 million dollar, $3 million dollar street to nowhere.
Regardless of where the contractor is from, they go with the low bid.
Which is fine, I am just surprised that a local contractor couldn’t do the work cheaper, maybe I am not, they have raping the taxpayers of SF for years.
The city uses Home-Rule to not pay contractors (Daniels Construction vs. City of Sioux Falls). It’s usually cases where they told someone not to bid or else. I hope the Iowa company lawyers have looked into this and are prepared to go through the courts.
Depends on how many layers of subcontractors there is. I heard that the local contractor who won the bid on the Pavilion windows, subcontracted the work out, and teat subcontractor even subcontracted some of the work.
If they weren’t government, they’d be organized crime.