Toronto says park stairs would cost $65k to build, man makes them for $550

boing
102

Oh, I’m not saying there isn’t corruption. It happens, of course it does.

That’s why most of the bureaucracy in procuring public contracts is there - to try and prevent corruption. The rest is there to try and ensure that the public body gets the best deal it can.

The way those things are implemented may mean they don’t do either perfectly or even terribly well but there is a bit of cognitive dissonance needed to both complain about corruption and complain that it takes too long and costs too much to get things done because of the public procurement requirements.

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103

I agree with you, the cost is due to bad contracting laws and incompetence by the bureaucrats. But there is a low key corruption permeating the whole contracting process, no need for kickbacks.

Contractors, bureaucrats and politicians usually know each other and are friends or at least friendly. Laws and contracting bids are designed to extract as much money as possible (the limit is public outrage) for both contractors and the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats choose the wrong type of contract -lots of unnecessary cost+plus- and contractors usually overcharge beyond the cost of dealing with the government. In exchange lawmakers get campaign donations and jobs they can fill.

People demanding more government to limit corruption should instead ask for smarter government. But there is a lack of critical thinking skills when it comes to the government by otherwise smart people on the left (some on the right are usually simply self-delusional idiots).

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Legally speaking, the existence of the stairs equates to council approval of the stairs. If they don’t block them, they’ll be sued for any resulting incidents.

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105

From my experience, most public workers are doing the best they can in extremely difficult circumstances.

It’s very common here (the UK) to talk about the ‘feather-bedded public sector’ as if public sector workers are swimming in money and workplace benefits. It is true there are benefits to working in the public sector which are much less common or lower in the private sector.

But some of those benefits are more or less illusory.

For example, most local authorities offer flexi-time to some extent, i.e. in theory an employee can come in when it suits them (within more or less rigid hours specified by their employer), they can take time off in lieu of time worked over their contracted hours, etc.

In practice, actually doing that can be effectively impossible.

Most public workers are covering more than one person’s post and doing significantly more than their contracted hours just to just about keep up on a regular basis (the funding for staff, or well anything, keeps going down but the work required keeps going up) and so actually taking time off in lieu just means they have do even more hours when they get back, so why bother?

Pensions are better but many people are paid so little that they feel they can’t pay in.

As regards incompetence, a lot of what public sector workers do is stuff that no one else does.

As a result it is hard to get competent other than through a career in public service. Since that is the case (and as you say contractors make a lot of money through public contracts), a lot of public sector workers can earn an awful lot more and have a nicer life by learning the ropes in public service and then going into the private sector.

So the public sector provides them with the training and experience and when they have the skills and knowledge, they take it off to the private contractor.

This does not mean that everyone in public service does this or that everyone left in public service is therefore incompetent (amazing as it may seem there are plenty of people who genuinely prefer working in the public sector) but it does mean there are a lot of personnel changes and institutional knowledge disappears.

This is entirely deliberate and leads to your next point:

As people have said above, public bodies having their own staff do public works = evil socialism/depriving hard-working entrepreneurs of the ability to make money, bring “efficiencies”.

It also costs money which politicians like to be able to tell people can be saved instead.

So we have a massive drive towards outsourcing which can be sold as ‘saving money’ (which will still have to be spent, it just goes to a multi-national company, instead of local people) and ‘creating jobs’ (when of course it first destroys jobs and then just shifts jobs around - the same work is still being done).

Just incidentally it also means that there are lots of massive companies around that are suddenly in need of non-executive directors and high level advisers. Jobs that former politicians are somehow just perfect to fill.

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106

I think those stairs are blocked about as much as they can be as it is. :slight_smile:

Certainly though, if I were advising the council, I’d be advising them to get rid. I wouldn’t want to risk it.

107

People just want the wrong thing, it would seem. Better you (plural) are here to let them know what they desire. Oh the poor poor vegetation between the car park and the sidewalk. Wont someone think of the vegetations??

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108

After I’ve spent six months carefully tending remnant ground covers and fighting off the invasion of dumped garden weeds, shortcutting pedestrians are welcome to meet a land mine as far as I’m concerned.

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109

I still buy gas that way. I remember stopping at a gas station in a Detroit satellite suburb and asking if they had an air-pump (before air-pumps were commodified), and getting a weird look from everyone in the place over such an alien question. It was like if I’d asked if a pump-jockey could come out and put gas in my car…

In it’s way, that was stranger than the armed mall security.

110

Well there are a lot of palms that have to be greased to put in each stair. A lot of politician’s friends that are owed favors, and you gotta give their kids a little money too. I’m sure there are some union rules, and OSHA standards you have to follow. Cocaine isn’t cheap, and you are going to have to find a hooker with really smooth butt cheeks so that you don’t end up with a powdered donut situation. I say $65,000 is probably the low estimate. More like $100,000 even, and a 3 year lead time.

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111

I agree with you. I don’t suspect malice on any of the actors —except politicians, their job is dealing in favors and influence so being a good at it is naturally corrupting. The end result is nonetheless a corrupt system due to conflicting interests. Both contractors and bureaucrats care very deeply about public contracting, while the general population does not. So the laws will skew towards the interests of bureaucrats and contractors in contrast to the public. No malice necessary.

Yes, and competence is not always rewarded, but the end result is incompetence still.

Also, the incentives for public service are badly misplaced. The money-pool is too large and nobody cares. If that guy hadn’t build those stairs nobody would notice the contract was $65k. Same thing with “savings” that are actually just budgeted differently.

I’m not so sure about this. Highly skilled people could probably earn more in the private sector, but for mediocre to bad workers the public sector is a huge benefit. I’m not sure about the UK, but at least where I’m from and in the US, low tier public sector workers make more. Some of the benefits are hidden; lower risk as it is much harder to fire someone, for an extreme example see policemen in the US; healthcare plans are generous and pensions are defined-benefits, so, on average, people get more out of it than what they paid.

112

If the city could put up a sign “Unassumed stairway, use at own risk” and wash their hands of all liability for anyone who trips on it, and not be legally required to keep it snow and ice-free in the winter, then fine. (The unintended consequence would be that they’d stick that sign on everything.)

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113

I disagree with this. As this topic shows, the public clearly care a lot.

And this differs from the private sector - how?

I don’t understand. There a bunch of people here who have pointed out that there are all sorts of ways $65k is not unrealistic or unreasonable for a properly done job.

A job btw that the public clearly wanted done but which whoever set up the park obviously realised was going to be far too damn expensive hence why they didn’t build stairs there in the first place and fenced off the slope.

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114

Well in this case, this seems apt (and yes, I know they don’t do this)

People here are choosing to take a steep dangerous slope for the sake of their perceived convenience, then complaining that the steep dangerous slope is steep and dangerous.

Fine, people can do that. That doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid.

Well, it’s nice someone does, especially bearing in mind it’s a community garden.

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115

That is sort of the point of a pension. :grin:

I get your point though that public sector workers’ pensions used to pay out better proportionally than private sector workplace pensions.

In the UK, that is now slightly less the case than it was. Public sector pensions are now generally based on the contributions paid in. So older public sector workers still have a very good pension, younger ones just have a good pension.

It is still a lot better than private sector pensions - mainly because private sector pensions are so crap not because public sector pensions are unreasonable.

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116

I know that those procurement procedures were put in place with the best of intentions. And when time permits, we comply. But much of my job is time critical. Not only is time=money, but very large amounts of money. Causing a delay is a big deal, and doing whatever it takes to keep things going safely is a big part of my job.
If you can hire people that can conform to a code of ethical conduct, then give them the responsibility to make smart economic decisions, it save money. It is not always easy to find those people. And as organizations become larger, the problem is amplified.
But when the only way to build those stairs is to spend 100k and take months or years to do it, the system is messed up. Multiply that by all the similar projects that are needed, and it is no wonder municipalities are spending insane amounts of money, yet the infrastructure is falling apart.

Also- This is a cheap method, which is in use in lots of parks already:

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117

It doesn’t mean they’ll be found guilty of charges if held to the test in a court, but they’re definitely responsible for everything that happens on public lands.

The question is not this. The question is, what are they going to do about it? Wring their hands and delay while crying out in pain due to red tape and high bids, or meet the problem head-on like rational people and find a solution?

118

OK, here is a screen grab of Tom Riley park.

Screen Shot 2017-07-21 at 9.37.36 AM.jpg2356×1246 1020 KB

The way it is laid out, people park in the lot which is essentially a terrace parking lot on the corner of Aberfoyle Crescent and Bloor St West. Then, in order to access the park, people are supposed to go 150 to 200 feet to the right to the main pathway which takes park users to the edge of the first field, under the train tracks and to the rest of the park.

The garden is set far to the left at the edge of the field, so as not to overtake the entire playing field. However, the fastest access to the garden is through a cut in the wooden parking lot barrier under the trees at the far left corner of the parking lot. This footworn path travels laterally along the wooden barrier and then cuts a sharp angle down a steep incline directly to the garden. Of course people will go this way to the garden, rather than walk 400 feet out of their way to get there. It’s a no-brainer.

If the soil embankment is left in place and not cut away, there is no collapse danger. I am betting the city wants to do something like excavate and place a retaining wall or make it wheelchair accessible with a long, shallow pitch ramp, or some other type of overkill that is inappropriate here. All that needs to be done is what another poster suggested: put in a stout railing, anchored in concrete and then make terraced steps with pressure-treated retainers at the edge of each landing.

This does not require a year-long potential usage study. This does not require new accessibility, or spending 60 to 150k. This is, generously, a $5000 1-week job.

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119

I disagree. And people saying that sort of thing is what makes councils worry about it.

I can’t say exactly what the position is in Toronto but as far as I know the law there is based on bog-standard common law principles. Therefore the council is not going to be liable for accidents that happen on a perfectly obviously dangerous slope which they have taken adequate measures to secure (by putting up a fence, no less), especially where there is an obvious safe way to access the area.

They will become liable if they build steps or otherwise encourage people to go down that slope.

Well, they put up a fence and made a safer path. That’s all they needed to do. If people want to hurl themselves down the ski slope instead that’s their look out.

Almost literally so.

“Yes, I will climb over this fence which is clearly intended to indicate that I shouldn’t walk down here, scramble down the very steep, rocky slope, twist my ankle and complain about it instead of walking the 400ft around the very nicely laid out pathway.”

Is 400ft really too much to ask North Americans to walk these days?

Why would that be overkill?

The able-bodied should have the convenience of taking the short cut but wheelchair users should have to make the long arduous 400ft journey?

And how much will the annual maintenance cost?

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120

Even kickbacks aside, the US federal government is obliged to pay too much (https://www.dol.gov/whd/govcontracts/dbra.htm) – maybe that’s okay as a policy, but it’s a huge additional cost the government has taken on. If that’s the deal here in the US, I can’t imagine that Canadian or Provincial governments have a softer route to paying sub-union wages.

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So how does one fix the problem?

And doesn’t last very long without maintenance. Nothing wrong with it as such. Would it be right here? I have no idea.

Several people have weighed in with what sound to me like pretty good reasons for suggesting it wouldn’t.

Nobody who says it would has so far countered any of their points. :thinking:

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