The universal belt on my van shredded on the way home from work last night and I missed the admin meeting.  I was hoping to hear the discussion on proposals to see if any of the council members tried to understand the details behind the costs.  Obviously, we would love it if they understood everything about the proposals but we know that they are not experts.  But I personally would like to see sometime that they understand enough so they could make a good evaluations.  In this meeting I was hoping to see each of them delve into one of the contracts and ask for more details on at least one of the items in the contract.

For instance I was looking at the MKSK proposal and I see that there are three phases to the Site Planting Plans that are associated with specific costs (Preliminary - $2,000, Intermediate - $6,000 and Final - $10,000).  

Looking at the proposal it describes the work that MKSK will perform.  From it we look for items that might relate to Site Planting Plans that we aren't being charged for somewhere else.  We see they have made it easy for us by creating a Section B Urban Design + Landscape Architecture.  In that section lets look for items that might relate to Planting Plans.  Open the proposal and I see Schematic Design items 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 15, 17, 21;  Design Development items  1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13;  Construction Documentation items 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12  Bidding and Permitting items 2, 3, 4, 5 Construction Administration items 1, 2, 3,  Project Close-out 1, 2 all seem to relate. 

If this were the section our council member was seeking details about I would hope that council member asked to hear more about what it takes to get these items accomplished.  For instance from my limited experience I would expect the "technical drawing items" to be accomplished by someone with an associates degree.  A new hire might be paid $33,000 a year, someone with a little more experience maybe $45,000.  In this case the company's hourly charge to the city would probably be about $70 an hour.  For the rest of the items associated with Planting Plans the person doing that work could be making as much as the site manager.  In this case the company could be charging around $100 an hour.  I personally don't see any costs associate with "Site Planting Plans" other than employee costs (direct or subcontractor).  If half of the work is technical drawings then it turns out MKSK expects it to take 210 hours of work to develop a Planting Plan.  This seems excessive.  So are there other costs that I'm not thinking about? 

At this point it comes down to how good are the questions council members would ask in order to get more clarification on the cost for this particular item to determine if this proposal item is costing us what it should cost us.  Remember if council does enough work and enough inquiry to save us 10% that will be $1.8 million dollars of savings on this project.  

I wish I had made last night's meeting so that I could have seen which items each of our council members explored in order to make sure they understood at least a little about the details of these proposals.  If each of the council members and the mayor had independently picked a proposal item to discuss in detail we would have heard a discussion on 9 different aspects of the proposals.  This should give us a good indication if the costs of the proposals are reasonable.  If the administration committee meeting happened this way this would help ensure we receive value for our tax dollars.  I can't wait to see the minutes of last nights meeting to see how effective the discussion was in assisting our council members in making an informed vote.