By: Libi Uremovic | Original Article at patch.com
“But what’s Critical in those Contracts is that the Profit Motive of those Vendors does not get in the way of the City’s Interest.”
Urban Logic Referenced 6 Times by Urban Futures
Urban Logic Consultants was referenced directly or indirectly six times during Beaumont’s July 28th Special Session. Councilman Orozco voiced concern after leading Council to unanimously agree to retain Urban Logic Consultants.
“They co-mingled your planning, engineering operations, and development services.”
Planning Director was Urban Logic Principal Ernie Eggers, City Engineer was Urban Logic Principal Deepak Moorjani; and Economic Development Director was Urban Logic Principal Dave Dillon.
Beaumont Special Session July 28, 2015 Transcript: http://podcast.ci.beaumont.ca.us/CC_2015-07-28_agenda.htm
The City of Beaumont held a Special Session on July 28, 2015. Urban Futures presented a overview of the City’s Revenues: http://www.ci.beaumont.ca.us/DocumentCenter/Index/1002
1) 45:30 Deis: This City has a large amount of contracting costs. We’re reviewing that in detail. Contracting can be a good thing. Some contracts are cheaper than if you do it in-house. But what’s critical in those contracts is that the profit motive of those vendors does not get in the way of the City’s interest. Having someone overseeing those contracts, monitoring those, is key.
2) Yes. Contracting, for example, you have a contractor that provides operational support for your [sewer] enterprise. Utility Partners. So that’s a contact cost. You have contracts that basically operate your public works department; plan check and inspection services are contract services.
3) Busch: We’ll get into the details when we do the expenditure side. But I think what Mr. Deis is referring to is that you have contractors reviewing other contractors’ work. There’s two contractors in the sewer enterprise. One provides the operations and the other, I guess, provides some level of capital oversight. As Bob was pointing out; having an in-house engineer to provide some ‘independence’ where the City’s issues are the first priority and profit is the 2nd priority of the contract. We’re definitely going to talk about the contracts and all that as part of the budget balancing strategies for staff. And we’ve had that discussion with some of your operating departments already.
4) Orozco: When we do the expenditures portion; one of my concerns is that the services contracts are overlapping in terms of having two contractors doing one job. I’d like to see if that’s been done in the past. We have current contractors now that doing various jobs.
Busch: It will definitely be part of the review.
Orozco: My concern is that we’re using certain fees and services that are applied for two contractors.
5) Lara: Are there no prior years’ numbers for planning; were they just lumped into building?
Busch: They’re right here under building and development. They co-mingled your planning, engineering operations, and development services. We wanted to break them out so you can actually see them. That’s important because there are contract operations in here. We want to make sure that the revenues match up with contract costs in the budget.
6) As Mr. Deis pointed out; it’s important to manage contracts as well. In the area of public works we have some concern with the number of consultants managing other consultants.