Dispatches from M.Emory Layne – The New, New Math

By Emory Layne

[Editor's Note: For more info, see Fact Sheets page, above, and click on "Borough Hall Renovations - Fact Sheet." That fact sheet includes a list of documents the public has requested, but has not yet received, including bid specs, bids received, project budgets and other records that would answer some of the questions Emory raises here.]

I feel ancient putting “new math” in a headline, as if people are going to remember the brouhaha over new math vs. old math.

I bring it up because there seems to be an entirely new kind of math being used down at Borough Hall.

Quantum Mathematics?

Here’s a clip from a Courier-News article dated January 30, 2005. It dealt with newly-reelected Mayor Janice Allen discussing the “top three issues” facing North Plainfield in the then-coming year (2005):

1. Borough hall renovations: Mayor Janice Allen said the estimated $3 million in upgrades at Borough Hall on Somerset Street went out to bid, but came in about $500,000 over estimates – so officials plan to solicit another round of bids. The work will include police department renovations and reallocation of space, heating and air conditioning improvements, and a new bay for the attached fire department. The borough already has received a $250,000 grant from the state, but hopes to pick up even more outside funding.

Is this another situation where the project “went out for two bids and then we can pick whomever we want” situations, like the one discussed in a previous dispatch (Smoking Pop Guns)?

Because the quote says: “It went out to bid, but no one met our figure…” which we’ve heard before. I’ve got to get in on some of that action.

Why do I suspect that it’s another two-bids-and-oversight’s-out situation? Because according to the research done by blog readers and Council candidate Frank D’Amore, the contract was eventually awarded to Dauti Construction Company for $3,999,500.

If that was done after a second, proper bidding process, who tipped off Dauti to bid 500 bucks under $4 million to come in as the lowest?

It’s not wrong to imply such a thing – I’ve been in the room when some things were being “bid” (not here in North Plainfield, mind you) and someone clearly told someone else what the lowest bid was and what figure they needed to submit to beat it.

Alternatively, if the Dauti contract was a result of the “two failed bids” loophole in borough politics, there are more problems.

How did Dauti, a company with which we’ve since had enormous problems getting the project done properly, get picked over other contractors in the state if the project was no longer being bid in public?

And if it was no longer being bid, why didn’t the Borough hire one of the companies that “came in about $500,000 over” the “estimated $3 million in upgrades.” (Quotes courtesy of Mayor Allen, circa 2005) i00nstead of a picking company whose estimate came in $1,000,000 over the $3,000,000 budget?

I reverently ask Mr. David Hollod, Our Borough Administrator, to explain.

You bid it out at $3 million, and someone came in at $3.5 million.

So you bid it out again, and either

(a) the second round again didn’t produce a match so you went with a contractor whose estimate exceeded the bid you’d already received by $500,000 OR

(b) you accepted a bid in the second round that exceeded the one you’d gotten in the first round by the same $500,000.

Voodoo economics?

Jump ahead to Meet the Candidates, August 7, when Council President Frank “Skip” Stabile was asked about the Borough Hall renovations being over budget, and responded, “the project is not over budget.“

I looked up “budget,” and it’s defined as “a sum of money allocated for a particular purpose.”

The Mayor said the budget was $3 million.

Somehow, we ended up with a contractor who said he’d do the work for a few c-notes under $4 million.

Isn’t “the budget” sitting somewhere in there?

It isn’t a living thing, like so many judges think the Constitution is. It doesn’t shape-shift and change from day to day, does it?

Or does it?

Because the same research mentioned above identified a bunch of “change orders” in the project. So I looked up “change order:”

“A modification of the construction contract to authorize a change in the work, an adjustment in the amount of the contract or a change in the contract time. The owner, architect and contractor must sign the change.”

I’m not going to touch that “contractor must sign the change” part with a change order for a 10-foot pole. [Editor's Note: Emory's discretion refers to the fact that Dauti reps apparently never signed the performance and payment bonds for the project.]

But I haven’t yet seen the original budget.

I’m not going to list out all the change orders, but I will provide a total. Summing the change orders and some items that didn’t even have ‘change order’ numbers assigned to them, I get a total of $186,280.30

Why stop there?

The borough bonded (borrowed) $150,000 for the demolition of two residential structures on Lincoln Place and the subsequent installation of a parking lot. That was after the borough purchased the Lincoln Place home (sitting over the future parking lot, and currently housing temporary Borough offices) for $400,000, a sum not part of the original budget – whatever the hell that was to begin with.

That’s $550,000 by my math. Add that to the change orders, and we’ve reached $736,280.

So, this project that was supposed to cost “an estimated $3 million,” which Mayor Allen was able to state openly in a news article, jumped to $3,999,500 when the contract was actually awarded.

And then it jumped to $4,735,780 when we tack on the stuff that wasn’t in the original budget.

Mr. Stabile, how do YOU define “over budget?”

Because by my math, Borough Hall renovations are already 57.9% over the budget announced publicly in the 2005 newspaper article. And there hasn’t been a single contact from the Mayor’s office since then to announce what’s been going on with all this extra spending, not to mention explain why the project is almost a year and a half past schedule and not done.

I guess we’re supposed to accept that a “budget” is “a number we pull out of thin air and announce” instead of “the amount we’re authorized to spend.” After all, the people who made the budget are the same people who authorized the extra spending. [Editor's Note: It's also not clear whether the change orders were ever submitted to the Borough Council for review and approval.]

See, math is easy when you know how it works.

We’ve all become kind of numbed to dollar figures in the news. They talk about trillions in Washington, and billions at the state house. We get all pissed off looking at household bills that increase by ten bucks.

Something that’s been completely lost in Stabile & Co’s ”Humph! We’re most certainly NOT over budget!” retort is that we’re talking about millions of dollars here.

This is North Plainfield. My best numbers show there’s 5,237 families living here. So each time the local government spends a million bucks, each of those families is hit for $190.

Extrapolating that (I love that word), each family in North Plainfield had to kick in just under $600 toward renovating Borough Hall. And it looks like Mayor and Council have hit them all up for another $380 each, because whoever’s running the show thinks there’s an unending supply of gelt to fund it.

Or perhaps, since there’s no budget to be over, that’s what the idea was all along.

How many families here in North Plainfield have four hundred bucks to just flush down the toilet? After they already forked over six hundred bucks to do something those same officials said had to be done?

Plus, some of the people calling for these changes and extra spending, or benefiting from them, don’t even live here in North Plainfield. Their families are kicking in zero dollars.

I was looking for a thing around the house the other day, something that costs about four bucks. Couldn’t find it, and it drove me bonkers. Eventually, I had to give up, so I ended up using something else that wasn’t quite as good, but which served the purpose.

Why? After all, if I was an incumbent politician, I would’ve rushed right out and bought another one. And since I was buying another one, I would’ve gotten the latest and most improved model.

But I’m not an incumbent politician. I figured the item cost $4.00. The place that sold it was about a gallon of gas’ worth of a trip away – about another four bucks. And since it was my own damn fault that I couldn’t find the one I already had, the most prudent approach was to suck it up and make do.

“Prudent” isn’t a word that incumbent politicians appear to have ever looked up.

“Suck,” however, is one with which they are very familiar.