Cost of State Construction

[conarb]

The project seemed simple: Replace a door to a file room. Following the rules, the California Board of Equalization requested a cost estimate for the project from the real estate unit that oversees state building construction and maintenance. This is what came back:

Replacing the door – $3,000.

Project management, architectural, and construction inspection services, plan review services by the Division of the State Architect and plan review and inspection services by the Office of the State Fire Marshal – nearly $14,000.

The door was never built, but those figures highlight how California’s state bureaucracy pumps up the cost of even the most simple projects, according to a new report by State Auditor Elaine Howle. Furthermore, taxpayers shell out more for the Real Estate Services Division to manage projects than when the work is contracted out to private sector firms, the report states, and receive sub-par results in return.

Real Estate Services, a unit within the state Department of General Services, charged $182 per hour in fiscal 2014-15, “or $46 more than the $136 average hourly rate of 26 private firms that conduct similar work for the state,” according to Howle’s report.

The reason for the higher cost remains a mystery. The division has not performed, the audit states, “an adequate analysis to fully explain the reasons for this difference.” It doesn’t have goals for delivering projects on time or on budget estimates, doesn’t track backlogs or their causes and “has not clearly set expectations” for project managers to communicate cost or time changes to departments relying on the division for services.¹

¹ http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article66449892.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article66449892.html#storylink=cpy

​

 

[Msradell]

It's a state agency in California, that alone should explain why the costs are so high!

 

[conarb]

It's a state agency in California, that alone should explain why the costs are so high!

Taxes are only one of the reasons I retired, it's almost impossible to get a permit here anymore, unless you are proposing politically correct projects like affordable housing located near train stations. One unbelievabley powerful set of groups are bicycle advocates, of all the environmental groups they are used as the storm troopers hitting city councils ahead of the others, what is so unbelievable about them is they are not even a suspect class, they are bunches of people wanting to use the streets as their sport venues. Everybody who wants to sop any development uses the environmental quality act to push for their own agenda, an example is the carpenters union brings environmental quality lawsuits and then settles out with an agreement to use union labor, nothing to do with environmental issues.

In this case a builder has been trying to get approval for years and after settling with no-growth groupes they finally got an approval, now a bidycle group ahs sued again blocking the whole thing again:

DANVILLE -- A judge on Thursday delivered a big victory to opponents of a 69-unit development near Mt. Diablo State Park who sued over bike safety. The approval process for the Magee Ranch project off Diablo Road will have to begin again after a judge ruled that a new review of bicycle safety in the project's environmental report requires the whole project be reconsidered.

Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barry Goode told attorneys for the Danville, SummerHill Homes and the SOS-Danville Group (formerly the Danville Save Our Open Space/SOS citizens group) that he couldn't allow adjustments to the Magee Ranch environmental impact report to address only the safety of bicyclists on a 1¼-mile stretch of Diablo Road between Green Valley Road and Mount Diablo Scenic Boulevard.Bicycle safety, Goode said, is tied in to traffic safety, which in turn is affected by the design of the housing project itself, including the entryways from the new houses onto Diablo Road. Bicyclist advocacy groups have been watching this case unfold. Dave Snyder, executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition in Sacramento, said he has no opinion on the housing project itself, and that the smaller-scale fix as proposed by the SummerHill attorneys likely would have sufficed to address bicyclists' needs.

But that the issue of bicycle safety was being considered important enough to affect the Magee Ranch project this way is heartening to him.

"When you're putting more traffic on the streets, you're discouraging more people from biking," Snyder said. "Bike safety matters, and this decision is a good thing." ¹

Their rational is that they are saving the planet by riding their bicycles instead of driving cars, in reality they are engaging in their sport, they, like the union, have found that the environmental quality act is a powerful tool to get what they want even though it has nothing to do with the environment. I've had two friends seriously injured riding their bicycles down that mountain and their accidents had nothing to do with cars, they ran over things on the road causing them to fall off their bikes.

I don't know Danville's affordable housing formula but I can guarantee you that many millions of dollars will go to the town as affordable housing fees to build affordable housing elsewhere in the town, the citizens are up in arms because it's a device to move poor with their high crime rate into the town, when the residents protest the advocacy groups scream "racism"

¹ http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_29652080/danville:-bicycle-safety-lawsuit-triggers-new-magee-ranch-review