It's no wonder it costs the City of Indianapolis so much to operate the water company. The City pays Veolia $58 million a year to operate the utility and then spends another $2 million on consulting contracts over a recent two-year period just to watch over Veolia. I'm not sure what Matt Klein and his staff at the Department of Waterworks do other than rubber stamp whatever all of these consultants and Veolia tell him to do. Based upon the IURC's stinging criticism of the City's one-sided agreement with Veolia and the payment of questionable bonuses to the contractor, it doesn't look like these consultants are adding much value for their work. Citizens Energy could achieve substantial savings in the water company's operation by simply eliminating these consulting contracts. Didn't Ballard tell us that's the sort of fluff he would eliminate in the city budget when he took charge?
The consulting contracts I uncovered at the City's new contracts database for overseeing Veolia included the following:
- Malcolm Pirnie, Inc.($400,000)
- Shrewsberry & Associates ($430,000)
- DLZ ($438,000)
- Crowe Horwath ($100,000)
- Kerry Heid ($200,000)
- O.W. Krohn & Asociates ($80,000)
- Christopher Burke Engineering ($20,000)
6 comments:
Reading about these enemies of the people makes me want to hold my nose. Btw, Portland, Ore. police have released the audio of the report of Gore's victim, oops, alleged.
Hasn't the city also spent 8-9 million dollars on studying the transfer of the water company? How does any of this reduce the costs to the consumer?
They expect to pay $9 million in professional fees to make the deal happen. I'm betting the actual number will be well north of $10 million before it's all done and said.
Did you see this?
http://www.indystar.com/article/20100628/LOCAL18/6280326/City-would-no-longer-own-4-sites
I wonder if any of their consultants told them that many of us think the city water, with its flouride and cheap chlorine that penetrates the skin, is not safe to drink without running it through a multi-stage filter and reverse osmosis system.
That's a non-issue that is being raised by Clark Kahlo. I respect Clark a lot, but he is really distracting from the really important issues in this deal. Those same sites were owned by a publicly-traded corporation for many years without a problem of public access. Citizens Energy is a public benefit company. It isn't going to block the public from Geist, Morse or the canal.
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