Thursday, February 01, 2007

$19.8M ICE STORM TAB FOR SPRINGFIELD PUBLIC WORKS

The City Council meets at 1 p.m. Friday to consider an emergency bill related to the ice storm. From the council agenda:
A special ordinance accepting the bids of DRC, Inc. and Beck Disaster Recovery, Inc. for storm debris removal, disposal and monitoring services respectively, authorizing the City Manager to enter into a contract with such bidders, to seek reimbursement for all eligible expenses related to the 2007 Ice Storm, amending the budget of the Department of Public Works for the fiscal year 2006-2007 in the amount of Nineteen Million Seven Hundred Eighty Nine Thousand Three Hundred Ninety-one Dollars ($19,789,391) and declaring an emergency.
That is all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can this $$ number be accurate? Lordy! CU is estimating their end at $15 million, and they are notorious for spending money like water. Can it really cost almost $20 million to pick up downed limbs and haul them off to a burn or recycle site? Really?

Anonymous said...

A $20 million price tag doesn't sound too out of line, considering the amount of damage involved.

A friend of mine was quoted a clean-up cost of $2,500; my quote was $250. So if we strike an average of $1,000 in cleanup cost per household, and even if we lowball the # of households with some type of debris that needs clearing, say 50,000, the total cleanup cost comes to $50 million.

Springfield covers an area of 73 square miles; that's a lot of area to clean up.

Anonymous said...

I was just reading about this company DRC. They are under multiple criminal investigations for fraud for contracts in Hurricane Katrina and in Latin America. I believe they are being sued by the US government for fraud....there's a couple of good articles about them in New Orleans and Mobile, AL.