Watertowergate

[XLFD]

---Miller Time

 

Way back in the year 2000, the Ludington City Manager at the time, Jim Miller, decided to paint the insides and the outsides of the cities two water towers.  He arranged a contract with MK Painting Inc., of Lincoln Park, and was granted permission to do so by the council, two members who still serve to this day.  To do the Gaylord Street water tower, originally built in 1933, it cost the city $146,200 (including the repair of 100 linear feet of flashing on the outside of the tank bowl).  The Danaher Street tower, originally built in 1961 which also held 500,000 gallons of water took about the same amount.  The project went from May 10 to July 1, 2000.

 http://www.ludingtondailynews.com/news.php?story_id=6831
 http://www.ludingtondailynews.com/news.php?story_id=6376

 

---Smoke (and Mirrors) on the Water (tower)

Ten years later, the established City Manager, John Shay, decides to paint these towers once again.  Unlike the year 2000, the economy is not looking too good; home sales and values now are going down, unlike the trend in 2000-- this means less revenue for the city now and in coming years, and a need to be fiscally frugal.  The condition of the previous paint job is not looking too bad.  One needs to consider his decision may be due to the recent painting of the Scottville and PM watertowers and perhaps this effort is due to 'keeping up with the Joneses'.

Danaher' water tower, untouched as yet

 

A little research shows that steel-based water towers are recommended to be painted every 20 to 30 years, and it is not uncommon for some areas to go beyond that, particularly for inconspicuous ones, like Ludington's are (except for home football games).

http://www.thisweeknews.com/live/content/pickerington/stories/2010/...

 

So maybe this project is about 10 to 20 years before its time-- perhaps Mr. Shay found a great deal-- after all, many businesses are offering discounts to encourage this sort of thing.  Considering that the Gaylord water tower cost $146,200 to paint back in 2000, we need to consider inflation.  The inflation rate between 1-2000 and 1-2010 has been 28.37% (http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflat...).  The $146,200 in 2010 dollars is thus $187,676.  So to get an equivalent of Jim Miller's deal (which occurred in a period where the businesses did not have to offer deals) John Shay should be expected to spend this amount or less on the Gaylord water tower.

 

City Council Boldly Follows Blindly

 

At the 12-21-09 City Council Meeting John Shay said:  "... the proposed contract with Utility Service Maintenance would have the City spending $151,000 a year on the maintenance of the two water towers (for 10 years).  The Gaylord Avenue tank would be a complete gut job, completely stripping the paint of the inside and outside and then repainting it, whereas on the Danaher Street tower, the company would complete the overlay on the outside only."  No competitive deals were publicly considered.  And this $1.5 million proposal was passed unanimously by the council as Ordinance 208-09, which has not been amended since.

 

As the Danaher tower only requires external painting and the company's maintenance package is effectively $30,000/year for 10 years (a fairly simple process which could more cheaply be done by city water employees with existing equipment), $1.2 million is used for painting, with about 2/3 of the job being done to Gaylord's tower.  Thus the cost for painting the interior and exterior of the Gaylord tower is around $800,000!  This is more than $600,000 greater than the Gaylord tower was painted back in 2000 adjusted for inflation--  Well over four times as much for the same work!!!

 

WTF?! (Water Tower Fraud?!)

 

For $1.5 million, a 500,000 gallon water tower can be built which won't require paint until 25 years (http://www.northcoastjournal.com/022405/news0224.html) The Smiley water tower down in Fruitport is being repainted a brilliant yellow this year for the low price of $200,000 (http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2010/06/smiley_face_wa...).  Other towers of similar size are being painted for even less.  The Gaylord tower was scheduled to be done in July-- two months later, they are still 'busy' at it.

Gaylord water tower, Sept. 14,2010

John Shay gutted proven programs and fired a few employees to help fund this project-- which shouldn't have even be considered for at least another ten years-- for a cost which should have been prohibitive.  Most of the extra money the City planned to make by hiking water rates 20% and sewage rates 8% on John Q. Public will go for the burden of paying for this. When added to the questionable restructuring of the city marina which cost $830,000, the City Manager spent $2.3 million this year in two costly projects which does not help one iota to the problems this community actually faces right now, or in the future.

 

The question one must ask is whether he is so incompetent as a City Manager that he willfully wastes our hard-earned tax dollars on such overpriced trivia while ignoring our community's infrastructure and true needs or is he competently managing over unethical practices where around $1 million of public monies is finding its way into someones' pockets without being earned legitimately.
  

[AQUAMAN]

I had heard some talk of this before, and if I remember right, the cost to paint the Gaylord Ave. tower was in the mid-$600K bracket alone. My first gut reaction was, wow, wish I had that job. That struck me as awfully expensive even then. Now the facts are revealed as in this articulate definitive thread, that yes, it is too high, way too high a cost. Something smells fishy here, and a further investigation may reveal some unwanted revelations as to whom is getting such a fat-cat contract, and why. Hope the author follows up on this, it may have questionable overtones for some at city hall.

[Edie Lindsey]

I'm with ol' fish and fins on this one, X, I remember hearing of some outrageous costs dealing with painting the towers, but thought that it must have been bid on and done because it was necessary to do so.

By the time this gets paid for, we will have to paint it again, because the CM will say we waited only ten years this time. We would probably be using the same company with no bidding, and another raising of our water and sewer rates. Of course, here was $1.5 million spent on something we really don't need, just like those docks. Aquaman, I see you beat X to the punch last year when you questioned the construction of the transient docks over at LT. What we need is more transient politicians.

If I get some more computer time, I will try to verify your data, X, though it seems pretty solid at this point, and I agree with the wastefulness of it all.

[XLFD]

Thanks Aquaman, Edie,
The current contractor being used is a national firm with their main office in Georgia. They aggressively pursue water tower painting and maintenance contracts, and my research shows that they seem to be on the extreme high end of prices. The top three such contracts I noticed on the net were all done by this company. Here is their home page:

http://www.utilityservice.com/

Their Northern Michigan branch of 'professionals' have surely taken their time this summer in completing just the Gaylord Tower. This last Sunday, I went by while they were removing some of the canopy-supporting 'tiara' around the top. I presume they might just have the detailing left to do, but I can't say they've done a real good job on what they finished so far. Here's a picture I took Sunday, if you look closely or zoom into it, you can still see the lettering and images from the previous paint job.

Now if they just redo the former logo, that would be fine; but if they put up some "Ludington on the Lake" or the new logo they use on their wayfinding signs, this will look pretty shoddy with these afterimages in the background.

[Edie Lindsey]

Walked by this area today, Sept 26, 2010 and it still looks like this. The crew looked like they could have been picking asparagus earlier this year (wink), and was cleaning up on the ground and making a bit of noise grinding some lower footings. I don't know whether they will have very many more painting days left to put on a logo. And I'm sure it needs a bit of time to cure at over 50 degrees, if its like the paints I know.

[XLFD]

Yesterday and today they have finally got to working on the lettering. I haven't really checked to see whether water tower paint needs to cure in warm temps, Edie, but generally outdoor paints need to. Just our luck, we pay $800,000 to paint the Gaylord water tower, and have to repaint it in a couple of years, LOL.

[XLFD]

Yes, the Gaylord water tower is effectively done, and it looks good. $800,000 good, I would disagree.

If you think Ludington got a bargain, here's what the city of Scottville managed:
Ludington Daily News 6-8-2010: "Scottville’s water tower will continue to sport a “Scottville’s World Famous Clown Band” logo when the tower is repainted, even though deciding this now will cost the city an extra $6,800
The city also agreed to hire contractor L.C. United Painting of Sterling Heights to do the work, with a change order to come during the project for $6,800 because of the logo change from what was originally bid out.

Williams said the L.C. bid is still significantly lower than what the engineer originally estimated and what the grant is for The bid without the change order is $184,500. It will go up to $191,300. The city pays 25 percent of the cost and the grant pays 75 percent."

Here's how it looked last week, it is now being painted. The taxpayers of Scottville paid $47,825 to paint their water tower. Ludington taxpayers will pay $1,500,000 to paint their two water towers. One of them on the outside only. That's almost 32 times as much money.

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

Granted our towers are a little larger I am sure. but not 32 times larger I agree.

[Mary A.]

Something is definitely fishy here. It brings to mind that little town in California that has been in the news recently because of money mismanagement by the council. Or closer to home for me, the corruption that has been ongoing in the city of Detroit. Whose pockets are being lined in Ludington, I wonder.

[XLFD]

Let us also not forget there was no competitive bidding ever acknowledged in any public forum. The guys we settled on are the most expensive I have seen, and since they are a national company based in Georgia, most of our local tax dollars are likely going out of state.

And also let's be reminded that our water towers were in fine shape and had at least 10 years before they should have started looking for a paint job. In my research, there were water towers which had gone nearly 50 years without being repainted. This is not something you do in recessions, when you don't have to.

[Mary A.]

I hear you. What really is going on behind closed doors? Isn't anyone at the local government level accountable to the taxpayers? Why do people elect these clowns?

[Edie Lindsey]

I see that in the recent FOIA article in the LDN that the fearless leader of our city charged for the FOIA request to see the competitive bids for the water tower painting, and that the city only charges to inspect records when the cost is over $100 for the city to do so.

Can you say base, bent, bribable, crooked, debauched, double-dealing, exploiting, extortionate, faithless, fast and loose, fixed, foul, fraudulent, gone to the dogs, inconstant, iniquitous, knavish, mercenary, nefarious, on the take, padded, perfidious, praetorian, profiteering, reprobate, rotten, shady, snide, suborned, tainted, treacherous, two-faced, underhanded, unethical, unfaithful, unprincipled, unscrupulous, untrustworthy, venal and corrupt? Pony up, Howdy Dooty.

A Joseph McCarthy wannabe named Public Record came on here just recently and asked me point blank three times what my relationship to XLFD was, once after it was made clear I didn't want to be bothered with his harassment/stalking. Before that another with the same methods dropped off a couple links which was once more an invasion of the privacy of a certain creator of the Torch. Our city has declared war on him and, by extension, this site, and everyone's need to know the truth of things.

[AQUAMAN]

Quite an admirable troll thru the alphabet lesson there Edie. Your right Mary, it's down state outsiders that are basically running city politics as usual, at most upper levels from the Mayor on down the list. I guess they like being a big fish in a small pond, whereas, they cannot be a big fish in the big pond they originate from. POWER is their thing.