Below is the West County Times review of the Richmond roofing scam. For background, see Hyperlink Corrections, April 10, 2007 You Get What You Pay For, April 10, 2007 and Peel & Stick, April 8, 2007, and The Payoff, April 11, 2007.

Lest this debacle be dismissed as a benign oversight, let’s be clear about what happened:

• The procedure used to procure roof replacement and repairs was poorly conceived and probably illegal, the result of naivety, laziness, or both. This procurement was implemented by the City’s purchasing manager and staff in the Finance Department, otherwise competent and skilled people, but they had no more business managing a roofing contract than a roofing consultant has doing brain surgery.
• The taxpayers were cheated out of an objective analysis and competitive bidding.
• The deadline cited as the reason for taking shortcuts is artificial and self-imposed without any rational basis.
• If the roof repairs fail because of an error, omission or oversight in the evaluation and specifications, the City has no recourse. The taxpayers will foot the bill.
• Just because other public agencies are using roofing material company sales reps to inspect roofs and specify repairs doesn’t make it right, smart or legal. There are a lot of lazy and gullible people out there. When WCCUSD Engineering Officer Bill Savidge (an architect) took over the District’s capital projects several years ago, he found the District had a similar arrangement with Garland Roofing, and he terminated it in favor of independent consultants and competitive bidding.
• The only way I can accept moving ahead is if the City retains a qualified roofing consultant to review the project and inspect the work.

If it’s hard to understand what’s going on here, let’s say your car is making funny noises. So you go out to Hilltop Toyota and ask a sales rep in the showroom to tell you if you need a new car. She has just the car for you, and you drive out with a new Toyota Highlander. Not much chance you would drive away from this encounter in a Ford Escape, even if it might have been cheaper and used less gas.

City rush job on roof repair irks official

·  RICHMOND: Councilman conducts Internet investigation into process but won't fight how contractor was hired

By John Geluardi

CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Contra Costa Times

Article Launched:04/14/2007 03:06:11 AM PDT

To the untrained ear, the phrase "peel and stick" doesn't sound as though it would trigger a week of sleepless nights and a dogged, multistate Internet search to uncover its meaning.

But that's what happened to Richmond City Councilman Tom Butt last week. The phrase jumped out at him from the pages of a dense staff report on a $500,000, council-approved contract to repair five community centers and two branch libraries.

Butt thought the term "peel and stick" -- used by a roofing consultant to loosely describe roofing material to be used in repairs of the Westside Branch Library -- sounded a little too slap-bang for a professional document.

"Normally these things use more technical terms like 'self-adhered flexible flashing,' and there's a lot of information about material manufactures with all kinds of specifications about their products; thickness, flexibility, heat resistance, etcetera," said Butt, who is the principal owner of a Richmond architectural firm. "To just write 'peel and stick' is unusual."

Butt was concerned that city taxpayers could get stuck with higher costs or shoddy work because the roofing consultant, who was writing up specifications so contractors could bid for the roof repair job, was inexperienced or otherwise unqualified.

What he discovered was that the city may have cut some corners in a rush to complete work on the city's community centers before June 15, when schools let out for summer.

After the April 3 City Council meeting, Butt went on a fact-finding excursion that took him, via the Internet, to several states, including Kansas, Ohio and New Jersey, before returning to City Hall. One of the oddest things he learned was that the "peel and stick" roofing consultant did not bill the city for his time.

"There's no free lunch," Butt said. "When these consultants come in, you're either going to pay now or pay later, and if you pay later, you usually pay more."

It turns out that the consultant, John Bennett, works for roofing materials manufacturer W.B. Hickman and that he wrote the work specifications in such a way that Hickman products would be an excellent choice to use for repairing several of the city's roofs.

In fact, a large percentage of the materials the city chose to use are Hickman products. Ironically, Bennett, who is a highly qualified roofing consultant, used the loose term "peel and stick" to describe suggested materials for the Westside Branch Library, which has a metal roof and would not require Hickman products for repairs.

Hickman is generally considered to make good products that are fairly priced, although the company has been in trouble for questionable business practices in the past.

In his Internet search, Butt came across a 138-page report by the New Jersey Commission of Investigation titled "Waste and Abuse: Public Schools Roofing Projects." In the 2000 report, it was determined that Hickman consultants "prepared plans and specifications" that "called exclusively for the purchase and use of products supplied by Hickman." The New Jersey commission also discovered that "roofing products bearing the Hickman name are priced exorbitantly compared with those of comparable quality."

Richmond was under a time crunch to get the city's community centers repaired before summer, said senior buyer Roger Helbig. He acknowledged that it would have been better to hire an objective architectural engineer to assess the repairs instead of an employee of a roofing materials manufacturer, but the city was trying to condense six months of work into two.

Given the short turnaround time, the contract bidding process went exceptionally well, Helbig said.

"I was absolutely overjoyed to have 11 companies show up for our bid walks, and of those, six sent in bids with only two weeks to prepare," Helbig said. "I have every expectation that we will have good-quality roofs done before June 15."

Although no one appears to be happy with the process that the city used to hire a roofing contractor, everyone seems to be happy enough with the contract, which appears to be priced fairly.

Butt remains critical of city staffers for the process they used to assess repair work, but he does not want to bring the issue back before the council.

"The best thing the city can do is learn a lesson from this and put in place procedures that will not allow this to happen again," Butt said.

Reach John Geluardi at 510-262-2787 or jgeluardi@cctimes.com