Anoka County Regional Rail Authority selects Sheehy Construction for Ramsey Northstar Station
Sheehy Construction provided the lowest bid out of eight companies. They submitted a bid of $6,583,300 to construct the station platform, the pedestrian bridge over the BNSF Railway tracks and the skyway connection to the municipal parking ramp.
Anoka County Commissioner Matt Look, chair of the Authority, is very pleased [...]
“Taxpayers are realizing a significant savings because we’re able to move ahead in the current marketplace,” Commissioner Look said. “Sheehy Construction came in nearly $600,000 under the estimated price.”
Christopher Leverett, from Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc., the Authority’s consulting engineering firm, provided a letter of recommendation to the Authority noting Sheehy Construction’s successful completion of multiple transit related projects, including on the Hiawatha LRT corridor. They also have experience constructing skyways and are known for providing quality construction services, [...]
Six of one, a half dozen of the other? Being honest about what you do?
Look's job is to represent government interests. To represent the public interest. Touting a taxpayer advantage is not improper. It is doing his job. Rhetoric does not get the job done, hard work and pragmatism does the job. And stimulating a lax economy by timing a rail stop bidding now is a win-win all around despite rhetoric - if you intend to build another rail stop in Anoka County then doing it now is sensible.
The problem is the man has postured in the past as being the "pro-business" Republican Pied Piper we all should follow.
We do not need a pro-business man in government. We need a pro-government man in government. It is reassuring that Look is starting to learn what his job is about. Running a government. Not favoring any sector. Not claiming to be "pro-business" when voters by-and-large are not business owners. He should be for what is best for the majority of voters, with business-owners being only one segment. And now, stimulus spending, what Look stripped to essentials is boasting over, is best for the majority. Building the rail stop now is better than when construction firms are backlogged and bidding high. (But that begs the entire Northstar Policy Question, the question of whether building something benefitting a mere handful of riders is governmental wisdom, or unfair subsidy of a few by the many. And would all the money from the start of Northstar have been better spent on road improvement - or for transit build-out elsewhere.)
Can you have it both ways? Giving out any contracts now, at all, is clearly a stimulus strategy, and Look's comments appear to indirectly admit that. Too indirectly, unfortunately.
Is it taking advantage, the building firms need projects now so they can be set against each other for low bids, in a fair bidding process to select a firm, or is it wise "stimulus spending" now, which some are quick to always criticize - at any time - as if such criticism is an inborn reflex?
What is clear, being too "pro-business" in its most narrow and costly sense, is what we see in Ramsey's over-generous contracting with a particular consulting firm. It is paying out money without any clear performance standards for what regular money payments are to buy. It would be like giving a non-bid contract for building a rail stop and not being vexed if nothing gets built after many months have passed. Money for nothing is never a good way for governments to operate.