Weird red flags were flying

Let me start by saying I don’t think the situation below is based in any shady deal or something illegal. But on Monday, the Crested Butte Town Council did something that just seemed clumsily weird. No, it wasn’t another executive session (which they did have at the end of the meeting) but it was the way they maneuvered a relatively minor expenditure before them. It felt a bit too rushed and clubby.
Here’s the background: About six years ago a house was built with the idea of it being used for future town managers. There is an unfinished room upstairs. So the town staff proposed to build a dormer in the house that would substantially increase the livable space in the structure. It will help make the house more comfortable for a family, which is the case with the current town manager. Fair enough.
So the staff took the project through the BOZAR review process this summer and received approval. The staff then touched base with the original builder of the house, who said he could install the dormer starting immediately. The staff told the council Monday that the cost of the dormer would be no more than $15,000 and the cost of the flooring and installation would be about $1,750.
Then Councilperson John Wirsing asked if the project was going to be put out to bid. He was told that under town rules, a RFP (Request for Proposals) wasn’t necessary unless a project exceeded $25,000. Wirsing pointed out that three contractors were on the council and they could probably do the project cheaper.
This is when it got a little weirder. Town attorney John Belkin made it clear that if any of the council contractors planned to bid on the project, they couldn’t vote on the matter. The town manager pointed out that a RFP takes time and costs money and could delay the project past the fall. I’m sure he was thinking (like I would) of the equation of long winter plus growing teenagers minus a finished room equals reallllly long winter. There was more discussion among the council. David Owen didn’t want the money for the project to come from the town’s affordable housing fund, which is where the town staff suggested the money come from since it was being used to improve the town’s affordable housing stock. There was debate but no council consensus on the issue. It just hung out there and the council nebulously instructed the staff to find the money in an appropriate fund.
The council ping-ponged a couple more ideas and asked if the staff could call say, three local contractors for an “informal” bidding process. Town attorney John Belkin made a comment that that sounded “odd” to him. “The bidding process means putting it in the paper and asking for bids…not calling your friends,” he said. But he ultimately advised that the staff would be within the legal box to do the suggested “informal” bid to get the process going before the weather window for such construction closed.
And so the council sort of instructed the manager to proceed in that manner. They didn’t take a formal vote on it but they set up a bit of a vague outline of how to solicit some sort of competitive bidding process to not exceed a total of $15,000. It just felt really weird.
Look, the situation came across as a bunch of guys awkwardly responding to a request from the guy they recently hired who made a plea to expand his residence to accommodate his family who just moved to town.
But this is your government. This isn’t a bunch of guys sitting around watching a football game, drinking beer and throwing out ideas on how best to solve a buddy’s problem.
It is local government and too often small town government can seem like a good ‘ol boy network, even when it isn’t. So the council should thoughtfully do everything within its power to avoid painting such a scene. They didn’t.
The town attorney brought up the “oddness” of the issue. It was weird. They didn’t take a vote. That was sloppy. The project has been published in the paper for several weeks in the “legals” section so the council could have been talking about this a month ago. They didn’t. It felt rushed, it felt weird, and it felt slipshod Monday night. How you do stuff matters, not just the end result.
If this were just a typical $15,000 budget request for a normal town project to paint a bus stop or something, the council would have taken two seconds to deal with it and move on. But the good ‘ol boy feel should have been a red flag that made it clear this wasn’t a normal situation. A councilman’s question about a bid and the price should have been a red flag. The uncertainty of where to take the money in the budget should have been a red flag. The town attorney’s initial hesitancy should have been a red flag.
It’s not always fair and sometimes it is not convenient, but dealings like this with the Town Council and town manager should be held to higher standards. And by Tuesday, the town manager sent in a request to be published in the paper soliciting quick bids on the project. That was a good move. Like it or not, sometimes you have to tread extra carefully for the sake of public perception. The council’s actions on Monday just felt weird.