According to this article in Thisweek, Burnsville will be rewarding the construction company working on updating Burnsville Parkway a $100,000 bonus because, “the heavy construction is over, all lanes are reopened and the drive is now smooth as glass.” Well according to one reader and also one Star Tribune reporter that’s certainly not the case at all.
Listen, I’m all for bonuses which expedite construction projects in busy areas. Even as a fiscal conservative that sort of thing makes total sense. You have to look a problem from many angles including the damage it does to the businesses along a route which is under construction. Hard to collect tax dollars from businesses which are closed due to overruns right? Right. I would have totally been behind the $100,000 bonus if the company had actually met the requirements of the bonus. Unfortunately while Thisweek claims the company has and goes on to say that all lanes have been opened as of August 7th, it’s just a flat out lie:
The company promised to have all lanes reopened in 65 working days, Peterson said. Alda reached that point in 53 working days, on Aug. 7, qualifying for a $10,000 bonus for each working day ahead of schedule.
Now, as you can see from the mobile phone photo taken on September 5th (30 days later) displayed at the top of this post, all lanes of Burnsville Parkway are certainly not open and thus in no way did the construction company make the minimum requirements as mentioned in the Thisweek article. If Burnsville Parkway still has to have two lanes closed (both of the eastbound lanes are closed at Nicollet as you can see above) to do any sort of work on that stretch of road then the City should not have ever have agreed that the job was done enough to grant a $100,000 bonus. If you’re going to make a bonus for a quick end to construction then it better be completed in such a way that the road will not need to be closed during any time to finish the job. I mean, it’s great and all that Thisweek chose to stuff the article with a picture of a closed BP station but perhaps they should have gone out and taken a photo of the actual roadway in question before they decided to publish such a ridiculous article.
What do you think about this “early completion bonus” and the clear fact that the roadway is not in any way, shape, or form complete enough to actually receive it? Do you think the City should have handed over the money when the company still has to close an entire side of the roadway to do work on it? Should Thisweek have done more to check out Burnsville Parkway? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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September 6th, 2010 at 8:26 am
So the company threw up a giant ‘mission accomplished’ banner, and will eventually finish the construction 7 years later.
BTW, one of the blogs on MPR NewsQ grabbed a snippet of your article:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2010/09/roads_to_ruin.shtml
September 6th, 2010 at 8:57 am
I drive Parkway everyday and am left in awe how this project has been handled. The road is only utilizing a temporary basic paint job, no left turn lanes where there are left turn arrows or in some cases just a double wide lane. The blacktop still needs another finishing layer on the top. The curbs are 2 inches higher than the road. Apparently the definition to Burnsville City Hall is 4 lanes open, with no more than 2 lanes flooded as a result of a moderate to heavy rain shower. I am not sure how long they expect runoff to flow UP and OVER concrete. I was absolutely puzzled that the taxpayers money was used to for $100,000 bonus.
September 6th, 2010 at 9:04 am
I’m floored by the idea that nobody actually bothered to check to see if the project was done before handing over the money.
I mean, when I’ve had people in my place to fix or install things, I look it over and make sure everything is in good working order first before the final payment. Was there some weird technicality in the contract that makes the current state count as “open” or something?
And I thought Thisweek’s offices were pretty close to there too, which also makes the lack of follow-up puzzling.
September 6th, 2010 at 9:27 am
I was really confused when I read the article. I take Burnsville Parkway every day and have never felt that it’s completed. The lack of left turn lanes has resulted in multiple incidents with confused drivers and the closed lanes that remain make me wonder how they could possibly have called this project complete to the extent of handing over big rewards like this.
September 6th, 2010 at 11:15 am
TimH, I think it’s common to wait 6 to 12 months before putting down the final layer of asphalt. This allows the roadway to settle prior to the final coat.
September 6th, 2010 at 11:22 am
The City is happy to call it complete because then they can fend off accusations by businesses, like BP and Anthony’s Parkway Grille, that the road construction was a huge problem for their businesses.
While I highly doubt the BP or APG would have been ok either way (as it is well known that many BP stations recently closed and were very hard hit by the Gulf issues and APG was just fucking terrible all around) it certainly didn’t help them any by having this construction.
You really have to wonder about an article like this. I mean we already know that Thisweek and especially Gessner is just the PR outlet for Burnsville’s PR campaigns but this particular article was quite possibly one of the worst examples we’ve ever seen.
September 6th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
I don’t live in Burnsville and I don’t think I’ve been on the parkway during construction, but this is really irritating.
The contractor’s and the local businesses’ motives are obvious – just squirrels after their nuts. But I’d like to know more about the City’s and Thisweek’s motives, and about the terms of the contract. I see enough construction contracts to know that it would be highly unusual if anything was left to interpretation regarding degrees of completion and triggers for payments.
I’m not sure how it could be worth $100k for the City to lie about it being done. Wouldn’t the local businesses be more in their face after they rewarded the contractor for being done early when it’s clearly not? Maybe the reward is based on an ill-defined “substantial completion” with which was slipped in the contract with a wink and a nod to appease the businesses? Of course that still doesn’t jive with the paper’s claim that all lanes were open.
…so many constituents to direct our anger towards
September 6th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Mr Marcos stated the key issue….what is “substantial complete” as defined in the contract, which should be public information. I also wonder who’s responsibility it was to oversee construction, was it the City or the engineering consultant? Typically that entity would be the one to make the call on whether the project was substantially complete.
September 6th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
I drive through this intersection at least once a day, and it’s been a disaster all summer long. Who do I call at city hall to complain? Not just about the unearned bonus — I just want to kvetch about the intersection and how ridiculous it’s been all summer! I was hoping they might have it done by this weekend for the Fire Muster, but it’s not looking good.
September 7th, 2010 at 9:31 am
This whole project has been a disaster. Even when it was previously completed, as mentioned it was horribly shoddy work. The intersection pictured had huge dips in it, the lines were not properly painted, the turn lanes were not put in, the street and curbs did not match up, etc, etc, etc.
On top of that, I still want to know how much extra was paid to put in brick sidewalks instead of cement.
September 7th, 2010 at 9:41 am
Sorry Lenny, even though I have no knowledge of road paving/engineering, I don’t buy this at all. You need only go to 140th — the stretch south/east of McAndrews that they just finished repaving. The top layer of asphalt went on within a few days after the lower layer with the temporary striping. Same goes for Burnsville’s job on Lac Lavon Drive a couple years ago.
I’ve never seen a public works asphalt job ANYWHERE sit for months…or even weeks…in that state.
September 7th, 2010 at 10:13 am
If I recall correctly, when the new Mississippi River Bridge was constructed, the contractor also had a done early bonus available. I recall this as it was covered heavy enough it popped up on my limited news radar. I know for that project that there was a discussion that MNDOT would not award any bonus until the road surfaces were 100% ready. And due to rainfall, the completion date was extended a couple days so that the contractor could finish painting the various lines and things needing painting.
I would have to see the contract to know the bonus award requirements. The way the city had that structured, Palda and Sons Inc. may have had various steps required to get a bonus. Note even the story says “most” things completed. So the contract language obviously supports a bonus for some things that do not require the entire project to be complete.
One thing that does piss me off, the Assistant City Engineer complements the fact that the project came in $1million below their estimates, as though that is something to be proud of. To me that highlights an inability for the city to properly estimate projects, or points to a question of quality in the work that was performed. Either the city didn’t know what it was doing when it estimated, or the city sure as hell should have made sure the contractor wasn’t cutting corners.
September 7th, 2010 at 10:16 am
This comes down to one simple statement, “The company promised to have all lanes reopened in 65 working days, Peterson said.”
Great, the lanes were “reopened” in 65 working days but now they’re closed again. That would be like me saying to my boss, “I got the project done in 65 days and you can use it, sorta, but I’ll have to keep working on it to actually get it done and in the mean time you can’t use it. Give me my bonus. Thanks.”
Only in the world of the public sector do things work like that.
September 7th, 2010 at 10:21 am
Doesn’t anyone get it all that matters is that our Queen Elizabeth feels the Parkway is complete. If she feels it’s complete then it is complete. Maybe that is a question that one should ask the Queen tonite at the council meeting. Is the Parkway complete and should the bonus be paid?
September 7th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Seriously, the intersection would have caused a car to bottom out if you had crossed it at the posted speed limit the first time the work was “completed”.
Now it has all been tore out again, and is being redone, or possibly is done again (have not been down there in a few days).
Previous to this, I was a big fan of “Get done early, get a bonus.” I think this job clearly illustrates the risk of this type of contract, in that the contractor clearly cut quality to increase speed.
Sorta the old saying. Cheap, Fast, Done right. You can have two of the three. We know this was cheap (under budget at least) and fast. But it clearly was not done right.
September 7th, 2010 at 10:27 am
I’ll be watching and can’t wait for you to do so.
September 8th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I saw the article in This Week and was happy to find out that the construction was complete. I’ve detoured around this area all summer on my way to and from work. So, happy old me decided to take Nicollet to 13 on my way to work this morning. What’s this? A back up of cars 4 blocks long? Must be a terrible accident! Nope, just construction and only 1 lane open in all directions at the intersection. Guess I’ll go back to my detour until next summer.
September 11th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
From: http://www.startribune.com/local/south/102496669.html
September 11th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Ah once again, the no one is at fault defense at the expense of the tax payers of Burnsville.
Seems to be a common theme from the City of Burnsville Staff and leadership. Let’s blame the economy for the BPAC, let’s blame the Emerald Ash Borer and economy for taxes going up while our property values drop.
When is the City of Burnsville going to get a competent estimator, as with every project they state it comes in well under budget? Sounds to me like you need a competent individual who can budget and estimate properly.
Why was this situation not mentioned with Gessner and printed in the article? They stated that the project was complete and all lanes where open when they knew this was not the case.
My idea is to dock Bud Osmundson’s salary by $25,000, take the entire City of Burnsville salary budget and every city employee should have their salaries docked to pay the remaining $75,000 of the $100,000 bonus for lying to the Citizens of Burnsville. So much for honesty and integrity in Burnsville City Government. What do we expect when we have Mayor Kautz and Dan Gustafson in leadership positions? City Staff is just following in the footsteps of these poor examples of leaders.
And to think, they would have gotten away with it if was not for Bill Roehl and those meddling Lazy Lightning kids.
September 14th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
You’d think with the Mayor’s condo being right next to that intersection, even she couldn’t be that myopic to see it’s not finished.
Of course, as of this morning, construction still wasn’t done and lanes were still closed, even though “all heavy construction is done” and “all lanes are open.” effective August 7th.
September 24th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
My confusion comes from other parts of the project that are also not complete. Like others I was frustrated that the “open” lanes were closed again but can understand when offered an explanation (problems with the water main.) However, the intersection of Parkwood and Burnsville Parkway should not be affected by the Nicollet / water main issue. The road levels are inches different and I am disgusted that we allowed such poor work in our city.
Also, what good is a local paper if it only gives incomplete / incorrect information.
October 31st, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Burnsville Parkway work is officially done now. Really. Honest. This time they mean it. I read it in the paper, so it must be true. (Right?)
http://www.startribune.com/local/south/105946038.html
October 31st, 2010 at 1:49 pm
From the article:
Estrada sucks and Belden, being that he’s in charge of South Metro coverage and knew the project wasn’t done (you know, since he’s the one who mentioned it first), should be ashamed that they didn’t publish the biggest part of the story…that it’s now almost November and they paid out the $100,000 bonus in August for work not completed until now.
Nice work Burnsville and really nice work Star Tribune. You should be so fucking proud of yourselves.