City Manager-for-Life Pam Syfert is “appalled” that Charlotte city councilman Andy Dulin would wonder out loud about the job performance of senior city staff in the wake of South Blvd. light rail meltdown.
Good.
Syfert needs to feel very uncomfortable about her job security and that of the yes-men in her court, guys like CATS chief Ron Tober.
Here’s what Dulin told the Observer’s Richard Rubin:
“I want the city manager and the transit manager to know with full expediency that I will push for their removal if the timeline of when they knew what was going on doesn’t jibe.”
That is exactly the question of the hour: What did they know and when did they know it?
Syfert’s first attempt at an answer does not scan. A soil test problem discovered a couple weeks ago regarding the vital Pineville parking deck — upshot, another $1 million in foundation work — is what Syfert says pushed the city to jettison Parsons Transportation Group and move to take the company to court.
Sorry, my Queen, no sale.
The cost of project zooms from $227 million to $427 million and another $1 million pushes you over the edge? Repeated warnings about the project’s cost, scope, indeed its very viability and rationale and it is a soil test that is the clincher?
Besides, Syfert and Tober told the city council that Parsons entire design was faulty. When was that determination made? CATS has been working from it for years. A design cannot become faulty simply because is costs too much. How and when, exactly, did Parsons mislead the city on costs?
Given what we know now, it is sheer fantasy that the city can waltz into court and win money back from Parsons. A court cannot reverse repeated bad decisions.
But the entire issue of going to court can still serve the city well, you see. By putting the issue of designs and costs behind the wall of “pending litigation,” Syfert, Tober and the city may be able to deflect questions about the situation for a long, long time.
Oh, and Pat McCrory calling for a possible outside audit of the project is a joke. Is Ashton Kucher hiding in Marshall Park? Charlotte is being punked.
That audit idea is another direct call-back to the old, old Convention Center meltdown of the 1990s. First comes the debate over inside vs. outside audit, then discussions over how much an outside audit would cost, then possibly bids, then selecting the auditor, then picking the drapes. You get the picture — another stall and obscure tactic.
Besides, the mayor should know that the city auditor already audited Parsons and found questions that Tober, CATS, and Syfert promptly swept under the rug.
The Queen is not amused. And not very amusing either.
