HomeMy WebLinkAbout9/5/2023 Item 5e, Schmidt
From:Richard Schmidt <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:comment 5e -- Cheng Park
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Item 5e – Cheng park
Dear Council,
Although the incredibly price of this project caught my eye, I had decided not to comment – but after visiting the site at
mid-day today, it became clear that some comment of objection must be made.
In thinking about this, after seeing the site afresh, it seems to me this “project” is a good exemplar of how and why the city
has become rife with malfeasance. So, here are some brief thoughts, after which I trust you will understand more about
the operation you nominally head.
1. Cost, $647,000 before inevitable change orders.
2. Site size, about 1,000 square feet.
3. Cost of project per square foot, $647 or more. Do you know that’s about double the per foot cost to build a very nice
home? So how is that justifiable for a minor park refresh?
4. What are we getting for such a huge expenditure? Who knows? There’s a list of negotiated prices for discrete items,
but no indication of how the described items fit to the site or where they are. There’s no plan, not even a sketch, to
indicate what’s being done where. So neither you, nor the public, have any documentary idea what’s going on. Keeping
the public in the dark is inexcusable, and not what an “open city hall” should do. How can the public participate if plans are
not revealed? Without a plan and more detail, do you really understand what you’re buying?
5. The individual negotiated prices make no sense: example, $72 for a 5-gallon shrub? That’s in the range of three times
retail, and a higher multiple of wholesale. All the prices seem jacked up.
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6. Meaning of the line items is inscrutable. A “shrub?” I’d want to know what kind of shrub, with common and Latinate
names, and exactly where it is to be planted, so I could make an appropriateness judgment. All shrubs are not
interchangeable or equivalent. This is basic information any landscape project should disclose.
7. Reading the staff report, one would think this is a down and out park in need of near total redo. Visiting the site
suggests it needs a light refresh due to the city’s failure to maintain it properly so it now has some deferred maintenance
issues. The site is not down and out, it just needs a bit of maintenance. I see only two significant items:
• Somebody needs to figure out what the issue is with the pond, why it’s empty and how to get it refilled.
• Some bare spots on the ground could be replanted or mulched.
I don’t see much excuse for most of the rest. New curb and sidewalk? Why? Where? And one could go down the list.
8. Hiring a landscape contractor to refresh the landscape would cost $15 to $25,000. You don’t need a $647,000 project
to deal with that. In fact, can’t the city parks crews deal with this sort of thing? It’s maintenance, after all.
9. So why do we have a $647,000 project looking us in the eye? Because, first of all the city has been malfeasant in
maintaining this park, and many other of its properties (the city’s adobes, for example, are a disgrace). There apparently is
no plan for, or incentive for, proper maintenance on a year to year basis.
Secondly, the city’s “process” is set up to promote this sort of maximal expenditure of the OPM which the city uses to run
its affairs. There’s incentive to skip maintenance so things can accumulate, and gee, at that point we really need a
“project” to fix stuff we could have avoided needing to fix had we just maintained things. And once we have a “project” we
have a “process” for deciding what else must, per the “process,” be done at the same time, so costs and activities
mushroom, whether really needed or not.
And so it goes. The fundamental process of a staff ego-bent on projects (you know, projects are sexy, maintenance isn’t)
produces one big deal after another, all financed with other people’s money, none of it shut ever down by the council. The
result is a giant ripoff for residents and taxpayers, ego gratification for staff, good-sounding publicity potential for the city’s
propaganda lords, and handsome profits for a few.
That’s why you need to draw a line and start drawing it by saying no to spending $647 per square foot to
refurbish a tiny park that’s already a pretty darned nice place.
Richard Schmidt
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