Posted on 03/29/2006 9:10:58 PM PST by Ooh-Ah
...
Almost seven months after Hurricane Katrina, the Nagin administration still dickers over details of a contract that would gradually rid the cityscape of these vehicular eyesores -- at a cost of $23 million over another six months.
Which makes it of more than passing interest to discover that the largest car crusher east of the Rockies, K&L Auto Crushers of Tyler, Texas, offered in October to do the job in 15 weeks and actually pay the city for the privilege of hauling the junk away. How much? How about $100 per flooded car. With an estimated 50,000 vehicles on the street at that time, the city would have netted $5 million, rather than shelling out four times that sum, as it plans to do now.
K&L's Dan Simpson said he first made his pitch five weeks after Katrina, on a piece of paper that he slipped to Mayor Ray Nagin at one of his boisterous post-flood town hall meetings. Simpson said he'd bring in between five and 10 mobile crushers. Working them six days a week at scattered sites around the city, K&L offered to crumple and haul the vehicles and handle the "remediation," or environmental disposal of gasoline, oil and other hazardous wastes and do all the paperwork. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
I think a lot of people weren't aware of what a 'house of cards' all these years of liberal government have made of New Orleans. It's the same thing that's happening in Detroit and San Francisco (except 'Frisco is still in the early stages).
Ah, we all know why Nagin has been dragging his heels on the abandoned cars issue. He wants his brud-'n-law to get the contract.
Nagin et al, like virtually any government employee at the level of Town Councilman and above, is undoubtedly suspicious and frightened of the concept of receiving money via an honest and voluntary agreement.
I look at the ultimate stupity in NO and laugh until I think about it and realize I'm being ruled by people equally as stupid! Lordy.
He should have offered to do it for free, instead of paying $100. Since he offered to pay money, Nagin must have decided to see if he could get more money somewhere else, and couldn't. If he had oferred it for free, greed would have not gotten in the way.
Its the honest part tha has him stumped. If someone is offering him $100 per car, and willing to take up all the paper work and disposal issues for hazardous materials, there must be a catch or a really big profit.
Nagin can smell money and now he wants to analyze the situation, find someone else who can make a similar offer, give him a kick back or owe him a big favor, and give them the contract.
Instead, he should've split the city into sections and auctioned off the salvage rights for the vehicles in each sector. If they had a fair and open bidding process for most of the work that needs to be done in New Orleans a lot of what hasn't been done would already be done.
(But fair and open bidding for public projects doesn't lend itself to selling contracts for favors, contributions, and kick backs.)
New Orleans to Auction Buses
Starved for cash, the New Orleans school district is hoping to sell its flooded school buses on eBay. Mayor Nagin admitted that the buses are unsalvageable, but could have nostalgic value.
“These were the buses that could’ve been used to evacuate stranded people, but weren’t,” said Nagin. “That gives them historic significance. Buyers ought to be willing to pay for that.”
Funds raised by the sale will be dedicated to the Mayor’s “city chocolatization” program.
read more at...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
Also how is it legal to sell those flooded busses. I thought there was a law against it. But maybe that is only if they WERE insured.
Maybe people who can't figure out they need insurance on stuff, aren't qualified to be in charge of anything to do with education.
“These were the buses that could’ve been used to evacuate stranded people, but weren’t,” said Nagin.
Just the kind of thing to say with elections around the corner. I think it's obvious by now that Nagin has no serious desire to remain mayor of New Orleans, or in politics, for that matter.
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