By James Sword, HANC President
On Thursday, January 14th, both HANC and HAMA were invited to give presentations to the Board of Supervisors' Government Audit and Oversight Committee, which is made up of Supervisors Breed, Peskin, and Yee. Both HAMA and HANC provided information similar to that presented at the press conference HANC called in October, and were followed by representatives from PG&E, CAPUC, SFPUC, DPW, & SFFD.
Ironically one of the topics on the agenda prior to this hearing was a recommendation by the civil grand jury that DPW have closer oversight because construction projects have been poorly managed. The recommendations by the civil grand jury for closer oversight of DPW were all ignored.
The core of our presentation was based on simple questions we had brought up during the press conference and had sent Supervisor Breed prior to the hearing. Below are the questions, and the answers that were provided during the hearing.
Infrastructure Q&A:
Q. What actually, officially, happened? We have no statement from the Director of DPW and/or the City Administrator on the nature of the problems.
A. Mohammad Nuru did not attend, a representative provided information we already knew.
Q. Is it unusual for there to be repeated failures of the same type in the same project in such a short period of time; does this happen “all the time?”
A. No, this was the first time any of them could think of such a debacle.
Q. What is the process used to select contractor and sub-contractors? Did either have any history of such errors on jobs done in the past?
A. Supervisor Breed is investigating the “Low Bid” policy of the city, but not why Ghillotti, or Synergy were selected.
Q. What are the responsibilities of PG&E to convey information on location of gas lines? Were they met in this instance? Who on the City side coordinated with PG&E, or was all of it left to the contractor?
A. PG&E puts all responsibility on 811 and the subcontractor.
Q. What were the “lessons learned” and how are they to be applied to future projects?
A. Everybody from PG&E, SFPUC, DPW, & CAPUC determined Synergy was at fault, and the only lesson learned was that DPW should alert CAPUC when there are gas lines ruptured.
Q. What procedures are to be changed in the contracting and construction process?
A. None other than a closer look at “Low Bid” policies.
Q. What procedures with PG&E are to be improved.
A. None, their highly paid, slick talking, PR person, determined they had done everything right, and Synergy was at fault.
Q. When will neighborhood groups receive an official letter from DPW/City Administrator explaining what happened and why?
A. As of yet we have not received anything official.
Where do we go from here? Nobody knows, the construction will begin again before summer. They are about to hire a new subcontractor, and the “Haight Realm” or as many are now calling it, “MUNI Forward” has been delayed until 2017. So, to sum it up, all agencies conveniently blame Synergy, Synergy has been fired, and the neighborhood has at least another year and a half of construction ahead of us. In my opinion Synergy was a scapegoat, when all parties are pointing fingers, they are all partially at fault and trying to hide something. We very much appreciate Supervisor Breed attending our Press Conference and calling the hearing, but in the end we seem to be in the same place we were before Synergy was fired.
Fingers crossed no more lines are ruptured and the construction is completed quickly, many of our local businesses cannot survive another month of constant disruptions.