tony jeter dot com

The picture below was recently taken at the new Municipal Courts building currently under construction.  As you can see one of the sub-contractors on the job was one of our very own City Councilmen. I am certain that the work will be of the highest quality and that everything is on the up-and-up…. but… don’t ya think that the taxpayers have a right to know the financial details of this job as they pertain to the financial gain of one of their elected officials? I believe that information like the value of the contract and who the competing bidders were and what they bid should be readily available to the public in the name of transparency.

To be clear, I am sure that the letter of the law and the City’s bid processes were followed by everyone involved with this project. However, I think it is the Council as a whole that needs to take the next step to add more transparency to the process.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have seen people driving swerving around town as they text on their phones.  An article from the NYT presents some interesting research on the subject. In particular, I see a lot of teenagers engaging in this behavior. I think this is a hazard that is only going to get worse.  Here’s a humurous article on the same subject for your viewing pleasure.

Click here to view a PDF of last week’s building permits.

I have spent a lot of time on the road over the last couple of months. I have traveled around the State as well as Florida.  There are really two things that I miss when I travel.  Besides my family I miss good old Temple tap water.  I have, on occasion, heard people gripe about the quality of our water here in Temple.  It is on these occasions that I wish I had a glass of that sparkling Waco or West Texas water to give them to quench their thirst.  This last week at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom I got a taste of water from a fountain that just about made me puke.  The one thing it did do was to make me buy bottled water the rest of that day.  Then again, maybe this was by design.

I’ve been at Disney with my family since Monday.  I’ve manage to get three days of posts in this week but that will do it till next week.

Click here to view a PDF of last week’s building permits.

For reference please read my previous post…

Did you that a General Contractor does not even have to disclose his list of subs to be awarded a contract with the City? It wasn’t until I recently requested that contractors provide the City with the sub-contractor lists when dealing with local preference issues.  During our first local preference contract discussion this year an Austin contractor informed the Council that he had not decided upon all of his subs.  So…. I wonder, would it be wrong I voted to award the job referenced in my previous post to a Contractor that after the fact picked me to do the work?  I’ve been told that a Council person should abstain from a vote in which there may be a reasonable chance of receiving work as a result of the contract being awarded.  Hmmmmm, wouldn’t it make the sense that I shold refrain from discussions about a project in which there may be a reasonable chance I could receive work as a result of the contract being awarded?

On Friday the Telegram did an article about a zoning case coming before the P&Z today.  You can read my comments in the article. Since that article came out I have had several discussions with folks for and against the NS zoning.  The Nays think that the area should be zoned for single-family homes ONLY. They go on to say that we will end up with everything from lawn mower repair shops to Laundromats.  This is entirely incorrect. Click here to see the acceptable (and unacceptable) uses within an area zoned NS.  The Ayes would like to see increased investment in the area. They believe this strategy could help transition the area from an area with a lot of rental homes to one that is seeing a new vibrancy that comes from investment from both homeowners and neighborhood businesses.

I believe I have come up with a good solution that could also be seen as a compromise between the two sides. Lets move forward and rezone the area Neighborhood Services AND require all commercial establishments to have to have a conditional use permit “CUP”.  This process will afford the City and neighborhood a tremendous amount of control to what kind of development occurs in the area. It’s a win-win in my opinion.

Disclaimer: Please note: the purpose of this illustration is to show the flaws in the Council’s current practice of dealing with conflicts of interest.  I believe that the use of the illustration is important to move beyond the debate beyond the philosophical to the potential. It is not meant to imply that any Council member has unduly benefitted from their elected position.

Let’s say, for illustration’s sake, that I am a Council member that owns utility relocation company. As a council member I openly advocated for extending the outer loop. As a Council member I participated in numerous Council discussions about paying for this extension. As a Council member I voted for a budget that included a $5M allocation for this project. The project proceeds to go to bid. The bids come in. The low bidder is selected. I abstain from the vote awarding the contract to the low bidder because I will be a sub-contractor on this job.  I’m clean and legal. Good for me. Good for the City.  I get the work and the City gets the lowest price.  That’s what some call a win-win deal.

Did you know that I submitted a bid for the utility relocation work with all four of the Contractors that submitted bids? I do a lot of sub-contracting bids for City work.  The reason being that I don’t have many competitors in Temple and it’s pretty expensive for out of towners to move their equipment down for a job of this size. I do a whole lot more sub-contracting work for the City than General Contracting work.  Did you know that General Contractors can choose any sub regardless of whether they are low bid or not? The City plays no part in the selection of sub-contractors. Heck, the General Contractor can even fire his original sub and hire me if he so pleases.  Did you know that there is no real mechanism in place for financial transparency after a contract is awarded?  Not only is the contractor free to choose any sub he wants he is also free to pay them whatever he wants. It is completely within the purview of the General Contractor to give me (the sub) a $10K bonus for being a good guy. I am a good guy, you know.

It’s interesting to me that there are laws setup to monitor the bid process but there is nothing in place to monitor what happens to the dollars after a job is awarded. Don’t get me wrong the City won’t pay if the work does not meet City specs but the City has no idea what the contractor does with the money he paid.  When you have Council members either doing the sub-contracting work or supplying the materials there should be a whole lot more transparency.  It doesn’t matter what line of business they are in – it’s almost always going to be a conflict that is not addressed by just abstaining from the final vote. We’ve got to start at the beginning, not end, if we are going to truly mitigate the conflict of interest.

….. what is the writer really saying?