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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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City of Muskegon moves to privatize its building inspection ...
www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2012/09/city_of_muskegon...
MUSKEGON, MI – Outsourcing building inspection services is not what the Muskegon City Commission wanted to do, but commissioners Tuesday said
City of Muskegon moves to privatize its building inspection services with Colorado company
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Dave Alexander | dalexan1@mlive.com By Dave Alexander | dalexan1@mlive.com
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on September 12, 2012 at 12:18 PM
MUSKEGON, MI – Outsourcing building inspection services is not what the Muskegon City Commission wanted to do, but commissioners Tuesday said they have been forced to do so by financial circumstances.
With a 6-1 vote, commissioners approved a contract with Safe Built Inc. of Michigan – a Colorado company with offices in Troy – to provide building inspection and permit services for the city for the next three years.
The privatization of building inspections will mean the layoff of five city employees and is estimated to bring more than $100,000 in annual savings to the city, City Manager Bryon Mazade said.
It also is a signal that the Muskegon-area cities and townships could not come to an agreement over a local, consolidated inspections department.
“This is never easy nor desirable,” Mayor Steve Gawron said. “These people (facing layoff) are known to us. They have been and are dedicated employees. But we have to be proactive in facing the new financial realities. We are not in control of our funding sources.”
City commissioners look at the loss of property tax base in the city and do not want to get into financial deficits that would create a need for an appointment of a state financial emergency manager, they said. The city lost its second largest taxpayer in 2009 with the closure of the Sappi Fine Paper mill and it may lose the B.C. Cobb generating plant in 2015 – the largest taxpayer in the city.
But Commissioner Willie German, Jr. questioned whether such a drastic move as privatizing city inspection services with outside employees is really needed at this time. He said the commission passed the 2013-2013 budget in July with no need for eliminating the city building services department.
“I don’t want to see our community losing these jobs,” said German, the lone vote against the contract with Safe Built. “I don’t think we need to rush into making such a decision now.”
But all of the other commissioners agreed with Mazade’s recommendation to privatize inspection services now. That came as a painful vote for several of the commissioners as Gawron and Larry Spataro are public employees and Eric Hood is a former city police officer.
“I don’t want to do this as I have the upmost respect for our inspection department, but right now this is the right thing to do,” Spataro said. “Now is the time to take action.”
Gawron said that the city commission must look at the interests of 39,000 city residents in making the painful cuts that will hurt five families of the city employees. Commissioners said the city already has privatized its garbage collections and recreational programs with other outsourcing moves expected in the future.
The two clerical employees and three inspectors in the department handle building, plumbing, mechanical and electrical permits for the city and are represented by the Service Employees International Union. Mazade said the five employees could have “bumping” rights within their individual union contracts to remain employed with the city in another position.
The Safe Built proposal to the city includes a provision that the company will look to potentially hire the laid off city workers, Mazade said. However, opponents point out that no job is guaranteed, nor are the current wages and benefits of the city workers.
Donna Mayo, a recent city retiree, told commissioners of the great work that the inspections department has been providing the city. None of the five employees facing layoff addressed the commission.
“They are some of the finest employees the city has,” Mayo said. “They come to work early and stay late. They are the kind of employees you want to maintain.”
Commissioners questioned city staff about the city’s control over the quality of the work provided by Safe Built, which will be in charge of building code enforcement working with city residents, businesses and building contractors on a daily basis. Mazade said quality controls are built into the contract and if the company is not performing to city standards the contract can be terminated with a three-month notice.
“For Safe Built, this is their business,” Mazade told The Chronicle. “For them, quality of work and customer service is critical to their business reputation. The proof will be in the pudding.”
Mazade said he expects Safe Built to seek other municipal inspection work in the Muskegon area, making the company’s services more cost effective. The company that was founded in 1992 has contracts with Troy and Madison Heights in the Detroit area, but most of the company’s work is in Colorado, Georgia and the Carolinas.
Former Muskegon inspector Bruce Dodge, now working for the city of Grand Haven, remains a city resident. He told commissioners that he believes contracts, such as the one with Safe Built, are not legal under state building laws and asked the commission not to privatize the inspection services.
Dodge said Safe Built is being challenged in a lawsuit over a contract with the city of Troy. Commissioner Byron Turnquist asked City Attorney John Schrier about the legal issues and Schrier said his opinion is that the contract is legally acceptable.
The Safe Built contract calls for the company to collect city building and inspection fees, keeping 80 percent and providing the city the remaining 20 percent. The city receives about $365,000 in such fees each year, but has the fixed expenses of staff, an office and vehicles.
Those fixed costs will be assumed by the company, which hopes to operate the department in a more cost effective manner, Mazade said. In addition, the company will lease office space from the city for $12,000 a year, moving into the city’s former Leisure Services Department space, the contact states.
The Safe Built contract is for building inspection services only. City staff will continue providing environmental and fire inspection services, Mazade said.
Email: dalexan1@mlive.com
Facebook: Dave Alexander
Last edited by untanglingwebs on Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:16 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:55 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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I am told Flint is in the process of once again outsourcing the building inspections.
This is just another opportunity to bring in a Snyder friendly company. Where are all of the savings we supposedly have incurred from outsourcing so far.
Flint outsourced garbage pickup and now citizens have no resource for community pickups. Health concerns are rising because of the rat and other problems created by the huge amounts of illegal dumping.
Inspections were outsourced during the Stanley administration to a Detroit area company called City Works.
Initially Flint gave City Works the weed abatement contract to City Works, in violation of state competitive bid practices and city ordinance, when thy were the high bidder by over $50,000. The two low bidders were AAK (Frank Timmons) and Grounds Grooming (Sharon Bone), both of which used local labor. Timmons was given a small contract for very high weeds that City Works did not have the equipment to cut.
City Works was not held to the standards previously held by the city for contractors. City Works was allowed to establish transfer sites in the city using vacant lots. Imagine coming home and seeing a mountain of trash in a lot near your home. They then picked the trash up again and placed it in convoy type containers to dump in Detroit. Local contractors had to have dump bills that matched the date of the clean up.
Despite these issues, City Works was given an inspection contract valued at over $1 million to perform home rental inspections. This company had a myriad number of legal and tax issues in Detroit . Despite their issues two reputable local companies were bypassed. |
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Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:13 am |
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mohsinj677
F L I N T O I D
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 this post is so great and nice
nitially Flint gave City Works the weed abatement contract to City Works, in violation of state competitive bid practices and city ordinance, when thy were the high bidder by over $50,000. The two low bidders were AAK (Frank Timmons) and Grounds Grooming (Sharon Bone), both of which used local labor. Timmons was given a small contract for very high weeds that City Works did not have the equipment to cut.  |
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Wed Jul 31, 2013 1:30 am |
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