Enjoy the following sneak preview from today’s Mercury—an early-bird version of our Hall Monitor column. Read our whole news section—and remember to check out our endorsements one more time—once we hit newsstands tomorrow!
IT’S TEMPTING to feel a bit of pity for Commissioner Nick Fish, who can hardly catch a break—having to deal with messes that unfolded under the watch of his predecessors—after taking over the city’s beleaguered water and sewer utility bureaus back in 2013.
Earlier this year, he was the lightning rod for a craven attempt by industrialists to take over the city’s utility bureaus, tapping into anger over increasing rates. As commissioner in charge during the election, Fish had to step in for retired Commissioner Randy Leonard and answer for the small, symbolic sins of the Portland Water Bureau (money for a “water demonstration house” and fixes for the Rose Festival’s headquarters, among others).
That wasn’t pleasant—akin to stepping in dog crap someone left on the sidewalk and tracking it around until you finally got a chance to scrape it off your shoe.
But it still pales before the hazmat crisis that’s just surged up around his ankles—this time courtesy of his other predecessor, Commissioner Dan Saltzman, former boss of the Bureau of Environmental Services (BES).
This morning, Fish has the honor of telling the world he’s placing BES’ longtime director, Dean Marriott, on paid administrative leave while two outside attorneys examine how and why the cost of new offices for the city’s Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant bloomed to three times their original budget.
That’s a jaw-dropping announcement—the near-sacking of a bureau director—in the largely genteel world of Portland government. But Fish had no choice. A city audit (pdf) that Fish requested alongside Mayor Charlie Hales (pdf), also released this morning, turned up far too many “red flags” for anyone in charge to ignore—red flags that somehow weren’t sufficiently raised years before when Saltzman was in charge of the bureau.
Some are baffling. Repeatedly, the city council was presented with incomplete and shifting cost estimates that Fish says were described as “optimal”—surprising for a bureau that delivered the city’s billion-dollar Big Pipe under budget and on time. Some seem vainglorious. The remote building—meant to be a functional home for engineers—wound up a needless showpiece with extravagant furnishings and architectural details. Some are ethically dubious. The project’s contractor hired BES’ design manager in the middle of the work—with BES letting that manager work for both entities for eight months. The most dramatic expansion in the project’s costs came during its design phase.
“I’m disappointed. I’m alarmed,” Fish says. “That’s why I’m taking some tough actions.”
Beyond the investigation, Fish has already changed how adjustments to construction projects come to council. His also office looked at 100 other BES projects done at the same time as the wastewater facility and found, to some relief, that they only exceeded their planned budgets by 2 percent. Some of those changes came after KOIN first reported, and then explained in great detail, just how badly over budget the building had grown. (Willamette Week also followed KOIN’s reporting this spring.)
But here’s what’s still going to be muddy: how a boondoggle like this could erupt under a commissioner’s nose—Saltzman’s—without anyone noticing the stench was this bad. Was it because Saltzman’s penchant for delegation turned into disengagement (at a time when he was complaining he had little to do after then-Mayor Sam Adams stripped the police bureau from him)? Was his office just another victim of a lack of transparency?
Saltzman’s named just once in the audit—on the list of which officials would be receiving a copy. (His office declined to comment when I called.)
Fish confirmed the investigation will focus solely on the bureau. He’s too busy shoveling his way clear to look back and cast blame among his colleagues, he says.
“I have to look forward.”
And that’s why you shouldn’t pity Fish. If he cleans this up, he might find some nice things in his political future to look forward to.
And Fish still supports the bloated CRC boondoggle after all this time, even though it’s supposedly dead. Keep shoveling, Nick. You’ve got a long way down.
who was the design contractor? who is the cip manager? pretty soft ball.
The city, and this department in particular, has a history of boondoggles, and I completely believe that this is another one.
But my career is in managing projects, with degrees and certifications in the subject, and I wanted to point that it’s not unusual for budget estimates to balloon right after the project starts.
Usually, the effort to explore design options is kicked off before very much detail is known – you’re just getting a group together to study possibilities and make recommendations. Without any other information, that graph isn’t scary to me. It shows that they wanted/hoped to build something for $3.2M, but after they brought in some engineers and started trying to design something that fit everyone’s needs, they were told it would actually cost $8.9M to build what they were looking for.
What’s important is that they then re-committed to that figure, and then stuck fairly close to it from then on. If it continued to balloon after that initial work, it would indicate their estimators had no idea what they were doing, or that someone kept adding new features, or that engineers made big mistakes. This timeline shows a fairly flat budget, after that initial investigation.
Final actual costs were almost 30% more than that first informed estimate, and that doesn’t show great performance, but it’s usually more worthwhile to compare costs to the first ‘informed’ estimate to than the earliest estimate, which is usually based on almost no data at all.
I’ll repeat – I have no faith in this department, and I’m sure they made terrible mistakes. But this is my area, and I thought it was interesting that the graph you posted actually shows fairly solid performance – the opposite of what really happened, I bet.
Mayor Potter tried to fire Dean Marriott way back in 2005. So, after nine years of dodging the axe, Marriott is given a paid vacation.
If I get reincarnated, I want to come back as City of Portland bureau head … they seem to have eternal life.
I would vote for LaVonne Griffin-Valade for any and every elected office in Portland.
@Reymont: Your point about the construction costs going up only 15 percent, once construction actually started, is right on. The audit noted it, and so did Commissioner Fish’s office. What’s interesting is that phase also marked when the project reverted to standard management practices. What’s also interesting is that $8.9 million became the new starting point without enough people blinking a few times and saying something to city commissioners before the reasonably managed construction work itself started.