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Warehouse District Park

Out of Towner said:
Are we talking about the same Bryant park with a fountain feature? The kind of feature that needed to be cut from Warehouse Park because administrative space was needed?
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lol, yes there’s a fountain there and it’s one of the least memorable parts of it for me( not saying we shouldn’t have one just that I don’t think it’s a defining feature of Bryant park)
 
Greenspace said:
To be clear, the fountain was taken out for budgetary reasons. The Parks Operation office had nothing to do with that.
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I recall a posting member say that the Parks Operation office did have something to do with the decision to cut the water feature from the park. I'll accept clarification but if I'm not mistaken a posting member said he made a presentation to the park planning committee on behalf of the community league. Their desire to keep the water feature as part of the park plan was rejected because the water pump and associated piping would take up space in the pavilion and the committee deemed administrative, storage, and programable space more important. Estimated cost of $46M to build and a fountain is too much for the City to handle? Nonsense.
 
^I may have said something about the consultation process, which I did on behalf of the league. The cost of the fountain feature was not nothing. It's millions of dollars, City admin asked for the budget to be expanded more than once. Some things had to be cut. I agree with you, I would have rather not seen the fountain cut, I think it's a loss for sure. Won't make or break the park though.

The Pavilion had more programming space in it originally, some of that was lost for Parks Operations. It wouldn't be fair for me to disclose all of our discussions but lets just say we didn't agree with all of the City's choices. It's just the Parks Operation space and the loss of the fountain are two different things.
 
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Greenspace said:
^I may have said something about the consultation process, which I did on behalf of the league. The cost of the fountain feature was not nothing. It's millions of dollars, City admin asked for the budget to be expanded more than once. Some things had to be cut. I agree with you, I would have rather not seen the fountain cut, I think it's a loss for sure. Won't make or break the park though.

The Pavilion had more programming space in it originally, some of that was lost for Parks Operations. It wouldn't be fair for me to disclose all of our discussions but lets just say we didn't agree with all of the City's choices. It's just the Parks Operation space and the loss of the fountain are two different things.
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Then they are outright lying to the public because I was told that it had to do with spacing constraints for the vaults and infrastructure. When I told them I have a planning and design/engineering background and requested drawings because maybe I can help find a spot (my bullshit detector was going off), I never got a response.

Also, a small fountain scaled to the size we are talking here isn't millions of dollars. 50-100k when responsibly tendered and acknowledging this is a government project.

The city needs to start doing a better job with project management because these numbers that keep getting thrown around on these relatively small projects are an absolute joke and only serve to grey the community and it's endeavors.
 
As someone who worked for the City for 15 years and as part of my job to assist in the preparation of multi-million dollar operating budgets I can confirm that department managers routinely padded budgets as much as possible to see what they could get past council; If council pushed back, then items that dept managers knew would cause public backlash (e.g. cut back on pot hole maintenance... don't cut the grass...cut back public service hours), would be offered as sacrificial lambs. It also worked in reverse: "oh, that would be lovely, but too expensive"; in reality, they were excuses to NOT do something some in the front lines were personally against.

Not saying this is happening here. I am just giving some background info on how the game was played during my time. I am in no way alleging impropriety or illegality; more along the lines of the old BBC comedy YES MINISTER where savvy management always got the better of the elected officials. Lets face it. people working in the system for 10s of years know how to work the system better than inexperienced 1st term council members still trying to master Robert's Rules of Order..
 
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The corollary to the observation that you made about the City's budget process is that since a water feature requires periodic and season maintenance, it was in the Parks department's self interest to oppose a water feature because it would create additional work for the department unless its operating budget was expanded. Who wants to do more work? Nobody!
 
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