Uninformed or Inexperienced?
by Larry Gilbert

Based on today’s [Mar. 24] OC Register, there is one thing the cities of Newport Beach and Mission Viejo have in common. Public sector projects that come in three times the original cost projections used to sell the citizenry for obtaining their taxpayer support. However, after reading today's OC Register, we are pikers when comparing the 11,000-square-foot expansion of the Norman P. Murray Community and Senior Center in MV on land that the city owned to the new Newport Beach Civic Center.

Our CIP grew for $5.5 million to over $15 million with more than 16 Change Orders to only one of the multiple contractors. In the Newport Civic Center, on prime real estate land adjacent to Fashion Island, the Newport Beach complex began with a cost estimate between $46.4 million and $48 million (to $60 million as stated by a local resident) while the latest reported unofficial or final figure is between $131.4 million and $135 million. Source: Register March 24.

At least N.B. included new ...furniture and fixtures (F&F) in their original project budget. Our Mission Viejo staff never mentioned or listed F&F in our expansion budget which ended up adding around $250,000 to the project. Here again it's not apples to apples. Even though they listed F&F, Newport exceeded their F&F expenditures, which is easy to do when playing with OPM

Thinking of civic center, I continue to be impressed with our neighbor, the city of Laguna Niguel, who saved up over a period of years in order to pay cash for their new City Hall on Crown Valley Parkway that was completed in October of 2011. Having attended that ribbon cutting event I did commend Tim Casey, their city manager, for their fiscal project management.

City staff are either uninformed or simply lack project management experience when proposing capital improvement projects (CIP). At times they try to disguise their "wish list" by creating new projects in "phases" to disguise the final project cost. I have to wonder if the residents of Newport would have supported this complex if they knew in advance that the project would consume upwards of $150 million dollars.