all of which are directly responsible for these added costs.
If we could bring this back to the facts..........
The above is not entirely accurate.
The NIMBYs here were a royal pain, their actions were annoying and unreasonable, and they did contribute to the cost inflation of the project.
But a quick review of the Construction Inflation Index will suggest that the increase in project costs here far exceeds what one might reasonably expect.
Now, there is the matter of having stored the modular housing at a cost greater than $70,000 per month for the last while. Even then, I can't get the inflated numbers to work.
I'm not going to accuse the City or the Modular builder of anything inappropriate here, except to say I do not see any public (as yet) explanation for the extraordinary level of cost inflation here.
I will then add, the storage of the units IS the fault of the City in that they issued purchased orders for a project they did not have legal authority to proceed with ............
Lets be clear, I'm not arguing for the NIMBYs, I'm not suggesting they (The City) ought not to have had such authority; but rather, you don't go incurring costs on a build you don't have permission to build. That's just unreasonable.
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I really do wish the OLT and the Courts had awarded the City at least partial costs for appeals that if they were not vexatious at the beginning of the process certainly ended up there.
That notwithstanding, I want to see an itemized list of every increased cost, I see no reason this shouldn't be public
before Council makes a decision on amending the contract.
Transparency is always good for democracy. I can't imagine that I wouldn't support proceeding at this stage, but I might negotiate with the vendor in a slightly more rigorous manner over their pricing.
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