How many dudes can we fit in this project? How many dudes can we fit in this project?
The question on my mind this week is a math and counting question—how many dudes?
I speak of the city’s various infrastructure projects, many of which started a while back and have, for one reason or another, been delayed amid the cavalcade of issues that have plagued our backlog.
For one, this week, we have successfully bidded out the completion of the youth convergence center in the Athletic Bowl. Yay, right? Except we’d been here before with a different set of dudes who, for one reason or another, failed to actually accomplish the project, a story that’s common to multiple projects in the city.
The flowchart for many such works has been “hire dudes”—“dudes do not do it”—“fire dudes”—and repeat. Hope the dudes this time are the ones to do it right.
Even the city has its fingers crossed, and I quote: “Hopefully, after the evaluation of the technical working group, they pick a responsive bidder.” Not even my words, I got this off of the city administrator.
This is the crux of certain suits filed against the “meyor,” alleging corruption and negligence as the cause of many of these project failures. And it isn’t hard to see where the accusation comes from—whether the accusations are meritorious is a matter for the courts to decide, not mine, but it outwardly looks logical. For a meyor who has built his reputation on and pushes for “good governance” and transparency, there have been quite a few failures in this department.
Infrastructure is a significant part of every administration’s plans, partly because it is essential, and partly because infrastructure is “sexy.” You can dress up in fancy suits and cut ribbons and put your name on tarps; this has been the ticket to political seating for at least one politico I can name off the top of my head (he “builds”).
But how many dudes, truly, will we run through on each of these projects? Millions and millions of taxpayer pesos are in these projects, and if I hear about yet another contractor failure to perform their contract, I’ll seriously rethink whether it truly is contractor failure.
You know, if the problem keeps repeating itself even after personnel replacements, then maybe the issue lies in the part that hasn’t changed?
For now though, I will quietly wait and see if the problem rectifies itself with the latest iteration of replacement. The new timeline is that the YCC completes in less than two years—let’s hold them to it.
