Mayor Sullivan Part I

John Sullivan on KBR, MWH & Halliburton: One of our council members attempts to create the illusion that MWH was initially hired.

It is common knowledge that KBR was hired but was not capable of making the bond so MWH and a number of KBR employees came on board to run our utilities projects, in Cape Coral including the project manager (Larry Laws).

We have a city council and staff which refuses to have third party consultants do an analysis of a $100 million utility project when we all know the price is over-blown.

We have something called Construction Manager at Risk. What is construction manager at risk? I define it as Highway Robbery.

This is a do it yourself method to install water and sewer lines and upgrade plants.

If you are willing to pay the price, then anyone can run a project using this methodology.

We use manager at risk even for building fire houses and the cost is twice that of a fire house in Charlotte County.

The incentive for the manager is to charge the highest possible price?

John Sullivan on City Engineering & Project Management: We have an engineering department that is supposed to be running projects of this nature.

They should be doing the design and building the system. They should be putting the jobs up for bid and selecting the subcontractors and inspecting the work.

We are paying people on the engineering staff that will not take the bull by the horns and get the job done in the most cost-effective manner.

If the engineers on staff do not have the qualifications or skills to run these projects then, why are they working for the city?

The city staff refuses to look for alternative ways to deliver the utilities.

It has been stated that our engineers have in excess of 100 years of experience yet we continue down the same path that we were on 25 years ago.

We have supervisors and engineers making in excess of $100,000 a year and yet they refuse to take the responsibility of running the projects themselves.

We have a highly paid staff and city manager. They created this mess it should up to them to fix it.

If they can't clean up their own mess then it's about time we get someone who can.

Why do we not get skilled people who can run these projects and cut the profit margin to the bare bone...

rather than making the people at MWH and KBR wealthy on the backs of the taxpayers?

The Nattering One muses... We concur. We don't need any outsiders or outsourcing, we can do it in house.

Now what is Mayor Elect Sullivan going to do about it? The MWH contract ends this January.

Are you going to bring in another MWH? or CDM? in the form of CH2MHill? Really, this is just trading the devil you know, for the devil you don't.

We Natter loudly and clearly... CCC need to hire the necessary road crew labor and an additional project manager experienced in infrastructure buildout...

to run these jobs inhouse; save the taxpayer 66% on their money; and provide much needed local jobs where the money stays in the Cape.

Mayor Sullivan, just talk to the guys in the trenches or where the rubber meets the road.