Architect responds to city regarding bids for Shawnee Park work

Mr. Ken Eftink

City Manager

City of Cape Girardeau

401 Independence St.

Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Dear Mr. Eftink,

I am using this medium to communicate to the council because this is the medium the mayor chose to wrongfully slander me -- behind my back, in front of the press -- at a meeting that I was not invited to attend. I will, however, at this time address the mayor's comments.

1. The mayor said, "Due to the architect's failure, the bids exceeded the estimates by $300,000."

I brought the project in $50,000 under budget. The actual low bid was by Denali at $208,000 lower than Sides. However, Denali turned in their bid five minutes late, and your city staff disqualified it. My original storm water specification met the city code, but your city engineer changed it, adding $75,000 to the cost. I had an alternate sports lighting bid, but your city staff insisted on one specific lighting manufacturer, adding $67,000 to the project. These three items add up to $350,000 and were all taken completely out of my hands.

2. The mayor said, "Why the hell were the lights for three new softball fields left out of the basic project?"

I was told by your city staff to leave these lights out of the base bid and to include them as an alternate so the city would have an individual line-item cost on them.

3. The mayor said, "There were errors and misunderstandings in the bid process."

This is impossible because I clustered the three low bids within less than 10 percent of each other. This cannot be done without having quality bid documents.

Again, the mayor should get his facts straight before he starts shooting from the hip. Perhaps there is a lack of communications between city hall and some of its staff.

Caution: Two things I need to bring to your attention that you might want to run by the city attorney:

A. The mayor has decided to "negotiate" with a particular contractor. I'm not sure that is allowed in a public bid with taxpayers' money.

B. Your city staff told me to sole source a single particular manufacturer's sports field lighting. I'm not sure that is allowed with taxpayers' money. This means that one $750,000 item (or 25 percent of my $3 million budget) did not get the benefit of the competitive bid process, and the taxpayers lost $67,000.

Ken, I am a private businessman providing professional services on a contract. I do not intend to become a pawn in a spitting match between the mayor and a department head. When I agreed to do work for the city, I never imagined getting caught up in internal politics and have it played out on the front page of the paper. This is not an arena that I am accustomed to. I do, however, intend to continue to perform on my contract with the same high quality of professional services as I have for hundreds of other clients over the past 38 years.

In conclusion, I have heard (again through the media) that I have been asked by the mayor to be at the next council meeting. I will not do this until I get a clear public apology from the mayor. The director of parks and recreation has already apologized three times.

Kumbaya,

Ronald L. Grojean, AIA

Grojean Architects

P.S. Not that anyone asked the architect, but my opinion would be to have the city meet and decide what they want and how they want it, and then to rebid the project. Then the city would get what they want, and the taxpayers would get their money's worth.

Also: I feel that providing the city's input in the bid process for multimillion-dollar construction projects is out of the field of expertise for most city department heads and their staff. In the future, I would recommend the city provide the architects and engineers with someone more qualified and experienced in the bid process to better coordinate and express the city's desires and intentions.