Barn Costs

BARN COSTS

City should complete project, hire capital projects coordinator

A recreated, self-contained pioneer farm is noble in concept, and it would be a foolish waste of a major investment to back off now on the over-budgeted Cobblestone Farm barn. Yet that does not absolve the city, and more specifically the Parks and Recreation Department, from responsibility for a cost overrun now pegged at $154,000.

The Parks Department handled the project poorly. Plans were changed and bids re-let three times, with even the “final” bid coming significantly over the financial package put together for the project. During the construction, several oversights in the final plan, such as the $32,000 cost of sewer and water hookups, drove up the final cost.

City Administrator Del Borgsdorf said “the Cobblestone Farm is symptomatic of a city that spent more than it collected, didn’t budget or control costs effectively — with equal emphasis on both — and historically understated actual costs to seek approval for projects.”

The solution is not to make heads roll but to change procedure.

If, as Borgsdorf said, the Cobblestone Farm barn is a startling example of how capital projects management gets badly off the track, the next step is twofold.

The first is for the city to provide the funds to complete the barn and then to cut its losses by aggressively marketing the site as a rent-out facility for meetings and social gatherings.

The second step is for City Council to follow Borgsdorf’s advice and create and fund a capital projects coordinator who will keep an accounting on all projects planned and under way, with an eye toward cost control. This should also serve to prevent recurrence of such a major embarrassment to the city.

—THE ANN ARBOR NEWS