Finance Committee - 8/2/2017 Page 14
couldn’t’ even see at the time when they did the original work. In this case, it’s one of those things they have
to change the size of the openings and do some work that was really unanticipated. It’s independent of for
example the purchase of chemicals and there are things coming forward that are going to continue to come
from wastewater that are pretty significant. They’re going to have a digester cleanout bid. There’s a lot of
work there and it kind of continues. | don’t think they can all fall in a pretty sequence for us. | don’t Know the
correct process | guess to get foresight of what’s going to come to finance because it’s going to continue to
come — here’s 1, here’s 1, here’s 2. It’s been that way for quite some time.
Alderman Cookson
| just picked on the last three months just because | knew that was $500,000 and what we’re seeing tonight. |
would love at some point in time for Ms. Osborne to be invited back into the Finance Committee and just give
a nice overview about the wastewater treatment facility and some of the projects that she sees forthcoming. |
think that would be helpful for me and that would be the request that | would make this evening. I’m not
necessarily interested in holding any of these up but | would like to see some more information from Ms.
Osborne.
Mayor Donchess
No problem doing that. This became extremely detailed and the depth of the work was very — this happened
during the previous administration when this started. In order to give the Board of Aldermen a little more
participation and insight into what was happening, Mayor Lozeau had asked Aldermen Deane and Siegel to
become very involved in the project. They did that and they helped outline, they understood what was going
on. The idea was that they were more technically minded than a lot of the other aldermen and they could
understand the situation a little better. | think to some degree we as aldermen relied upon them to make
judgements to what was happening was correct. No they’re not involved on that level anymore because kind
of the crisis passed and a lot of the major work was done. | don’t have a problem with bringing Ms. Osborne
in to explain an overview on what — | think the Aldermen should be informed if you care to be. Sometimes
people don’t but if you care to be, it’s great if the Aldermen want to be informed and know what the details of
what’s going on. That’s maybe why we have the Finance Committee.
Alderman O’Brien
I’m glad we’re not really going to tie this up. | could see this happening in my limited forays into construction
at the time. You always rip off something into something. Really strategically rotten underneath that’s going
to happen. From reading on the discussion here, it said it was almost impossible for them to measure this
because this is an active flowing. Thank God it is flowing. | could see that it was not possible for them to
really properly measure this and this is it. When we’re dealing with these two channels that are active
channels, it wasn’t noticed until they were able to block up one. There is a highlight here and it’s the same
situation will occur when the contractor demolishes the long tunnel because additional (inaudible) tunnels
maybe needed on that. At least they had the foresight to give us warning that they would be back on
something similar like this in the future.
Mayor Donchess
| think the depth of where — again I’m not disagreeing. We're going to bring in Ms. Osborne but the depth of
their involvement is suggested for example “when flow is blocked from entering the short channel, it was
determined that the existing cutouts along the concrete walls would not allow the new screen to fit properly.
This change order is for the additional saw cutting needed so that the new screen would fit within the existing
concrete channel. The same situation will occur when the contractor demolishes the long channel, however it
is premature to determine the additional costs until they begin the work and assess the needs.” Obviously
they’re deeply involved here. This is highly technical. You practically have to be down in the water to
understand all this. We'll get Ms. Osborne to come in. That is not a problem. | think she kind of enjoyed
herself. She did a good job and she'd probably like to come before us. It’s pleasant to have her come in. A
new face.
