Two Jokes About the Ludington Water Tower Contracts, One Funny, One Not

[XLFD]

Three contractors are bidding to paint the two water towers in Ludington.  City Manager John Shay interviews representatives from each of the three companies that are based in Ludington, Grand Rapids, and Atlanta.

The contractor from Ludington looks at the two towers does some figuring on his laptop and says "I reckon the job will take about $360,000; $150,000 for materials, $150,000 for labor, $60,000 for profit."

The contractor from Grand Rapids sizes the water towers up, looks at the specs, runs it through a calculator, itemizes costs on a list, and says "I can do this job for $350,000; $140,000 for materials, $140,000 for labor, $20,000 for mobilization, and $50,000 for profit."

The Atlanta contractor does a quick mental calculation, leans across the table and whispers to Shay:  "1.2 million".

Shay leans back and says:  "You haven't even looked at the specs, or did any itemizations.  Heck, you haven't even seen the water towers.  How did you come up with such a high figure?"

The Atlanta contractor whispers back:  "$300,000 for you, $300,000 for me, $250,000 to help assist this deal to get through your city council and media without problems, and $350,000 to hire the contractor from Grand Rapids to do the painting."

Shay went with the Atlanta contractor.

And the second punchline:  When a contract to paint the two Ludington water towers was sought in 2009, there wasn't three contractors making competitive bids, just one making an extremely non-competitive bid.  Ha, ha, ha.

The City Manager has lied about the terms of this contract and requested $57 for a FOIA request(and received money therefrom ) for the 24 page contract between the City and Utility Services Maintenance, that shows no itemization of costs and the total absence of any talk of competitive bidding.  Hee, hee, hee.

Whereas, the City Manager has subsequently contracted with that same company for a $326,068 painting/maintenance of the Brye Road  water tank (in front of Home Depot), while the last painting/maintenance of that tank cost in 2001 was done at $50,000.  This was also done without any legitimate or ethical bidding process.  Ho, ho, ho.

If you are not a Ludington city official or Utility Service Maintenance contractor, why aren't you laughing at this second punchline ?

[AQUAMAN]

I think you should rename this thread to: "Shay's Watergate Towers".