Task Force Teases Out Utility Undergrounding Lessons

 The lessons of a utility undergrounding exercise plagued by cost overruns were teased out in a public forum Tuesday night, resulting in some general conclusions about civics as well.

The League of Women Voters of Piedmont, led by President Tam Hege, organized the discussion, which drew an audience of 35 to Piedmont City Hall.

The main panel of the evening was the LWVP Task Force on the Piedmont Hills Undergrounding Project, which resulted in cost overruns of more than $2 million borne by the city. The project is now the subject of mediation of two potential lawsuits by the City of Piedmont against engineering and design firms hired for the project.

Because of those pending claims, city officials have been reluctant to talk about the issues, said Kathleen Quenneville, a task force member. She noted that the task force had reviewed all Piedmont Hills Undergrounding documents posted on the city website and had reviewed documents generated by the city’s outside counsel in the two potential suits.

There was a lack of a responsibility to report problems up the city’s chain of command, task force members said. The timeline had workers encountering rock in digging trenches very early in the project, in July, 2009. It was November, 2009, before the City Council learned about significant cost overruns and December, 2009, before it was mentioned at a public council session, according to the task force’s timeline.

“Neither the city administrator nor the City Council appears to have ever asked for or considered any basic information regarding the city’s potential financial risk exposure in connection with proceeding with the project,” said task force member Rob Hendrickson, reading from the task force report.

The problem was aggravated by a sloppy bidding procedure in which the contractor had specified a high rate per cubic yard for drilling into rock, and a rate that remained high for the industry even after it was negotiated down mid-process, said Hendrickson.

There was an assumption that things would go smoothly as they had in previous undergrounding districts, task force members said. “Having the (former) city clerk filling the role as project manager might have been fine had nothing gone awry,” said task force member Alex Dunst. “But the city clerk was not able to recognize there was a serious issue until it was too late.”

He concluded the city should maintain a clear delegation of authority in managing initiatives. “All projects of certain magnitude should be managed by someone who is experienced, competent and independent,” Dunst said.

“There wasn’t clear responsibility,” said Quenneville. “It was management by committee and that was something that was problematic.”

Task force member Al Peters, a former mayor, said the city needed to develop procedures for proceeding with underground districts without the city bearing significant costs. “There’s no clear policy on cost allocation between what is appropriately a city cost and what is an underground district or a private cost,” he said.

In the city allocation, Peters added, there needed to be an accounting for city staff time and resources used in the preparation period preceding the formation of an undergrounding district.

The task force, Peters said, was uncomfortable with the council lowering the standard of votes required within the undergrounding district boundaries from 70 percent to 50 percent in order to proceed with the Piedmont Hills project. 

Quenneville said the task force urged the City Council’s audit subcommittee to finish its work and report to the council in order to have a discussion of changes in procedures necessary in overseeing projects.

Quenneville said she was concerned that the council may not be asking the city administrator to raise issues and challenge assumptions — that he should not believe his job is “just to make things happen.”

Former LWVP President Lianne Campodonico commended the task force for its spirit of engagement. It’s a model for the city to follow, convening groups of citizens who can look at a project together and work through disagreements “with this kind of thoughtful practice of conversation,” she said.

Campodonico said such engagement might go a long way toward assuaging some of the “anger and frustration and contention going on over some very large development issues in town.”