As we all know the “Grandstand” project started out as a one million dollar EPURA project. It is a full blown tax dollar gusher now boys and girls, 2.2 million dollars and climbing!
According to the Trail Gazette the project is two hundred thousand of “our” dollars over budget (my old time math told me that 1 million dollars subtracted from 2.2 million dollars is 1.2 million dollars - not two hundred thousand dollars) and way behind schedule. Staff offered up excuses for 71 change orders - SEVENTY ONE CHANGE ORDERS. Good lord, this is a prefab grand stands we only use a couple months out of the year. The town engineer offered up this explanation for one of the overages “when excavating for the foundation we hit rock.” Imagine that! Dig a hole in the Rocky Mountains and hit rock who could have seen that coming?
The town finance director noted that there was still $237,000 more dollars in the EPURA account - heck we might as well flush that down the rat hole too!
It’s only tax money, so what’s the big deal? I can hear it all now can’t you be positive, can’t you get on the team and get involved, don’t you love Estes Park? How dare you be critical of Town employees and our elected officials. They are doing the best they can, they are not capable of any better - any way it is none of the Estes Parkian’s business how Town staff squanders our tax dollars. Join the Rotary for heavens sake!
Maybe Town employees and elected officials are to busy working on their own personal projects and getting them done on time and on budget to worry about our tax dollars.
The Estes Parkian isn’t running this project, the Estes Parkian isn’t giving you excuses for incompetence, the Estes Parkian isn’t managing this fiasco, the Estes Parkian hasn’t spent one dime of your money. The Estes Parkian holds up a mirror and you look into it and are repulsed by what you see.
Shame on me for holding up that mirror and having an expectation of competence, professionalism, and ethics.
These people are responsible - see if you can get anything but excuses from them:
The entire Trustee Board
The EPURA Commissioners appointed by the Town Trustees (Art Blum trustee candidate)
The Town Administrator who is the town representative on the EPURA Board
The Assistant Town Administrator who is the town appointed EPURA Director
The Town Engineer
A local architect (charged us all more for his services)
The two trustees who head the Economic Devolvement Committee
The Department head of the Economic Development Committee
The Director of Events
The Public Works Project Coordinator
This brain trust costs this town in the neighborhood of $500,000 in salaries alone per year, remember we are a three month seasonal community there is nothing else for them to do! They get paid to do the job correctly, not make stupid excuses. Your elected officials oversee this and it appears acceptable to them - in fact they chair the department committee who produced this circus act. In other word they are part of the process, think “fox in the hen house.”
The cost in salaries and man hours alone will set ones head to spinning. Why so much mismanagement and confusion? There is only the one project going on in this entire town.
Is the Estes Parkian making a tempest in a tea pot? We think not. Let’s examine a recent local comparison. The School Board oversaw a 22 million dollar ($22,000,000.00) project that came in on time and under budget. Just say’n.
The Estes Parkian
A Home Rule of One
