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Public
Employee Press Local 375 tells
Parks Contract IN, $ave millions
By
GREGORY N. HEIRES Local 375 has launched a campaign to cut the use
of overpaid consultants in the Parks Dept. and let civil service professionals
do better work for less money. A report the local presented to the City
Council April 28 charges that the agency wastes millions of dollars on outside
consultants while its own union Architects, Landscape Architects, Engineers and
Construction Project Managers could save money and improve the quality of important
capital construction projects. Over the years, Parks has allowed
the ranks of its professional and technical staff to dwindle as it has increased
the management fat and relied more on consultants, Local 375 President Claude
Fort said. This misguided policy wastes taxpayers dollars and squanders
the expertise of the departments employees. Unwise
and unproven consultant designs can result in multiple change orders, which drive
up costs dramatically, says the report, which was presented to the City
Council Waterfronts Committee at an April 28 hearing. The report shows
how civil servants have saved the department millions of dollars by changing consultants
recommendations or offering better alternatives. Local 375 1st Vice President
Jon Forster testified at the hearing along with Reza Mashayekhi, a Structural
Engineer at Parks. Too often, management keeps pouring money into
consultants plans, which ultimately end up costing far more than they should,
says the report. Consultant plans often prove unworkable, leaving city civil service
professionals to resolve technical problems to salvage the project. Forster
said Parks Dept. staff has consistently turned out excellently designed projects,
including City Hall Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Ocean Breeze fishing pier
on Staten Island, and the Ederle Amphitheater in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
Engineering staff decimated Despite
the strong track record of its own employees, Forster said Parks has decimated
its in-house engineering staff over the past 10 years as the agency has farmed
out technical work to consultants at a much higher cost to taxpayers.
He called the policy misguided because the work of civil servants is often superior
and almost always less expensive. Mashayekhi presented concrete examples of projects
where city workers helped save millions of dollars by suggesting alternate plans
to the recommendations of contractors. - He personally
helped the city save $4 million in repair work along Brooklyns Shore Parkway,
where numerous sinkholes had appeared.
A private contractor recommended covering
the sinkholes with concrete slabs, but Mashayekhi showed that the slabs wouldnt
prevent further undermining by the sea below. The department ultimately adopted
his plan, which uses layers of material below the surface to dissipate wave action
and prevent further erosion. - In another case, an
in-house alternative plan for reconstructing a seawall along the Bronx River cost
only $300,000 to implement, compared with a consultants design, which would
have cost $1 million.
- But the Parks Dept. rejected
an in-house design modification for rebuilding the East River Park Promenade within
the $55 million budgeted and accepted a consultants plan, which ended up
costing $72 million a waste of $17 million.
In
its report, Local 375 called for Parks to expand its in-house professional and
technical staff, improve promotional opportunities, pursue non-discriminatory
hiring and promotion policies, and assign the most challenging projects to civil
servants rather than to more expensive consultants. The local also urged
the City Council to create an interagency committee to coordinate waterfront policies
and to establish an oversight policy that would let civil servants report wasteful
or badly designed projects without fear of retaliation. | |