Why Didn’t They Want Skakun To See Those Invoices
Monday, February 25, 2013 @ 3:45 AM
One of the main functions of the Finance and Audit Committee at City hall is to ensure that the City is receiving fair value for the money it is asking from the taxpayers in any given year.
The request by Councillor Brian Skakun to look at seven different companies that received money from the City in 2011, was met with road blocks from the Mayors Chair along with the Chair of the Finance committee , Cameron Stolz.
The Mayor, speaking to the request, wanted Skakun to put his request to a formal motion. He was chastised by the Mayor, Stolz, Wilbur and other councillors. Before making your judgment on the issue we ask that you consider a couple of invoices that came to light after 250News made the same request as Skakun.
Amongst the seven companies are a number of invoices related to work done by L&M Engineering.
A copy of the first one is attached.
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Now if you operated a small company just as Stolz and Green do, (or any other of the Councillors who were blasting Skakun for asking) would you hire someone for $85.00 an hour, and an engineering assistant at $50.00 an hour to count pedestrians on Winnipeg Street? Would you be prepared to pay $14.40 cents for someone to drive over to Winnipeg St from the offices of L&M for 24km’s at 60 cents a kilometre? The bill total is for $575.72 to count pedestrians on Winnipeg St. Do you suppose, if it were your own business, you would hire a student at 10 to 12 bucks an hour to do the same job? Or is an “Engineering Assistant” required to count people walking down the street?
The second issue is the matter of L&M being paid $6,000.00 plus HST of $720.00 to do a “peer review of the Prince George Official Community Plan”.
How many hours were spent, where is the break down of those hours and who worked on the project, and above all why did we need an Engineering company to review our Community plan?
We recently spent $350,000.00 doing what was supposed to be a core review on spending. How come items like this were not flagged for the,” what the hell is going on bin”? Instead the core review focused on getting more money from the payers and the users of the city.
We need to start from the bottom up with a serious look at how we spend the City’s money. An examination of one of the series of invoices suggests that didn’t happen.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.
Comments
You’d want to make sure the person you sent to count people could add up a good accurate tally….and everyone knows (the liberals tell us) that in order to get the best person for the job you have to be willing to pay exhorbitant salaries and perks.
Wish I worked for L&M!
Wow.Gross.
These couple of invoices are small in the big scheme of things. Don’t forget we pay $100 per hour for a mechanic to work on our cars.
I think the main issue here is that they (Mayor / Administration & most of council) blocked Skakun from seeing these invoices which makes everyone feel that they have something to hide.
This is it we have to do something about this BS spending.
“We recently spent $350,000.00 doing what was supposed to be a core review on spending. How come items like this were not flagged for the,â what the hell is going on bin”
Gee Ben, don’t make those questions that easy.
They were not flagged by KPMG because they are themselves consultants and their invoices do not look much different. In fact, they may very well be higher than L&M.
The likely reason why the peer review is a lump sum is because they likely quoted on that basis, probably showing the separate hours and meetings which came to that total.
The other was piece work based on agreed to charge out rates.
A reasonable mark up on a raw salary/wage is around 2.5 to cover benefits and business overhead. Bookkeepers, for instance, do not create chargeable time and are paid out of that markup.
The $50/hr is likely a wage no higher than $20/h.
So, in case there are firms that did not know L&M’s charge out rates, such as mileage, etc. they now know a bit more when they bid on the next projects.
It’s the fine line betwqeen right to know and right to privacy …..
progress, I suppose.
;-)
“Why Didn’t They Want Skakun To See Those Invoices”
I think it is simple. They do not like Skakun and they want him to be reminded of that as often as possible.
In the process, they make themselves look very petty. Get over it and worry about running the City properly because you aren’t on so many counts.
Looks like it’s easier to spend other peoples money when it comes to city hall.
Mr. Meisner is indeed correct when he asks… “would you hire someone for $85.00 an hour, and an engineering assistant at $50.00 an hour to count pedestrians on Winnipeg Street?”…
I THINK NOT… but apparently city hall thinks it’s ok to spend other people’s money in this way.
you see, the more info one gets, the more questions are generated.
The real question is not how much did we pay, but why was it required. The cost is normal for something like that.
I wonder if City Hall has learned its lesson yet. Don’t fool around with trying to hide stuff. It’ll bite you in the end.
I believe those charge-out rates are standard in the engineering industry.
L&M has overhead and other expenses that have to be covered in those rates, this shouldn’t be a surprise. If the City would have hired students to complete this work, the costs would still be considered high to most people (EI, CPP, Tax, WCB etc).
Then there would be a report that would have to be typed up and reviewed.
The City hires a lot of outside contractors to complete all types of work, so this shouldn’t be news to anyone.
“Why Didn’t They Want Skakun To See Those Invoices”
As I recall the other councillors made the point that this exercise would be a waste of the City’s time, and makes the City look like it’s hiding something. All it does, in my mind, is show how inefficient the City’s invoicing and record keeping systems are.
We live in the age of computers, anyone should be able to look up an invoice electronically in a matter of seconds.
Agree that the rates paid are within reason it they need a detailed traffic count. The invoice that stuck out for me was the one for 32k to Picketts Consulting for “Climate Change report related to the myPG Community Sustainability Plan”
Good god the city spends upwards of a million dollars a year on computers! You would think that there would be at least one nerd in the building that could use one of those Google machines to find a report from either provincial or federal government environment department that would apply to Prince George.
Another alternative is to drive to the top of the hill….60 cents a km…there is a university there with people who do research and even write papers about this sort of thing.
Ben also makes a very good point, if he can find how inefficiently the City operates on a couple of invoices, then it opens up a whole lot of other questions about how the City spends our tax dollars.
The City should manage taxpayer dollars the same way they would manage their own. By the looks of the above, that didn’t happen.
Scary S green one term wonder again..c’mon Brain run for mayor..got my vote..
For 30 bucks an hour I will count pedestrians, and will throw in the typing of the number for nothing.
Because I only am working one day you only need to record their name and the amount you paid.
That would save 20 bucks an hour,160 dollars a day and I would be happy to do it.
The climate is always changing. There, bill in the mail.
Dan Millburn Right now Prince George has the ability to accommodate at least 22,000 more people without rezoning any areas. Dan Millburn ocp review 2011â
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.pgfreepress.com/news/126360038.html%3Fmobile%3Dtrue&sa=U&ei=0z4lUafUIIG1iwKOsIGgCg&ved=0CBAQFjAD&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNHCp28mU4il7JWvrZ-7AoKaKAAO8w
I wonder if the city has done an actual count of the number of cyclists using our streets before spending all they have for redesigning them with eight foot bicycle lanes?
If there is anyone that should know the OCP better than anyone else…. it’s L&M Engineering ????? Just send the bill to the city. Sure would be intersting to see that peer review!
Ipg and the peer review
http://princegeorge.ca/cityhall/mayorcouncil/councilagendasminutes/Agendas/2011/2011_10_03_430pm/documents/2011%20City%20of%20Prince%20George%20Economic%20Development%20Service%20(Revised%20Slide%2017).pdf
“I wonder if the city has done an actual count of the number of cyclists using our streets before spending all they have for redesigning them with eight foot bicycle lanes?”
They should be sending people out there right now to see actually record two things
1. how many of the bicycle lanes have been blocked and continue to be blocked due to their being used fro snow storage.
2. how many bicyclists are on those streets on warmer spring like days we are starting to get here or there, and is the one that is, using the road or the sidewalk?
;-)
I wonder who the person on council is the inside person for L&M?
“I wonder if the city has done an actual count of the number of cyclists using our streets before spending all they have for redesigning them with eight foot bicycle lanes?”
That was something Dan Rogers and council rammed through. I don’t recall any special studies being done prior.
L&M has the capacity to do the work. Squeeze them on mileage, for instance and have a City rate closer to the BC rate of 50 cents or so, and they will squeeze back in other areas.
The real question with mileage is, when a middle management engineer or upper level technologist travels to a site on Boundary Rd, for instance, is the travel time to and from charged out at full rate, half rate, or not at all.
Those little differences from one firm to another can actually make a difference.
And then the real question becomes, how have rates changed over time and how competitive are they with other firms. While L&M seems to dominate, it may have nothing to do with favouritism and everything to do with capacity and performance.
The info presented to the reader does not give anyone any idea of that.
So, a most important question would be what was learned from the so-called peer review (I did not realize that work done by city employees required external peer reviews. We are not looking for credibility of a Masters or Doctoral thesis evaluation here.
However, if that has become the practice, I have to question that with a WHY? Who has brought the standard up to that level of additional cost. How much has been saved as a result of catching errors or poor methodology which would have cost money when implemented?
Where is the report and what changes resulted in the OCP because of it? Proof reading for content should be a capacity the City has which is an invaluable training tool for its own employees to keep the experienced ones in practice and provide a challenge for the younger ones.
Sending it out is not a way to reduce the perishable skills in the City’s own workforce.
above all why did we need an Engineering company to review our Community plan?
exactly Ben!! Who is actually in charge of city planning? It appears L&M are. And there is someone who knows the OCP better than L&M Happyinmyworld….and that is Roy Stewart :)
These couple of invoices are small in the big scheme of things. Don’t forget we pay $100 per hour for a mechanic to work on our cars.
2 points
1.Yep, shops bill out heavy. Mechanics don’t get a 100/hr
2. Mechanics complete a intensive journeyman red seal program to work on your car. They are trained in theory and have practical experience.
You don’t need either to count cars or people.
“You don’t need either to count cars or people.”
Right. All you need is a camera set up to do the counting.
http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/contractors/detection/icoms-detections/icoms-detections2.html
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