City eats $100k Svoboda owes Lincoln

With the City of Lincoln facing a budget shortfall of nearly $9 million, it has surprisingly written off more than $100,000 that Ken Svoboda owed the city due to nonperformance of his landscaping contract. This according to the Sunday Journal Star (it's the article on the side of the page, not the main article).

Assistant City Attorney Steve Huggenberger confirmed the change order effectively waived $101,100 in “liquidated damages” against Ray’s for not getting the medians landscaped according to the city’s specifications by the original deadline of June 1, 2004.

What a crock! Nobody can honestly say that if Ken wasn't a city councilman who has the slimmest of chances of becoming the next mayor that he wouldn't have received this sort of preferential treatment.

Ken should be ashamed of himself and the city should be ashamed of itself for letting him get away with it!

Kenny, why won't you mow the lawn?!

Press play and make sure your speakers are turned on. Enjoy!

City pays $10,000 to babysit Ken

The Lincoln Journal Star ran an editorial today detailing what a poor job the city of Lincoln has done looking after the people's money.

Particularly damning was the revelation that the cost for the city of making sure Ken Svoboda made good on his contract. This news was detailed earlier this week.

In the case of the contract with Clark Enersen Partners, the city paid landscape architect Dennis Scheer $180 an hour (later raised to $185) and landscape architect designer Karen Nalow $60 an hour (later raised to $70) for construction/observation/administration services” overseeing Councilman Ken
Svoboda’s contract to maintain the medians on 84th Street.

In the end, the cost was an additional 20% above and beyond they money the city had paid Ken!

By October the architectural firm had run up $10,765 in fees. Svoboda’s contract itself was worth only $56,000.

And I thought the $10.00 an hour my babysitter charged was expensive!

Ken costs the city more money

Deena Winter writes in her column today that the cost of keeping Ken Svoboda doing his job cost Lincoln tax payers $185 hours.

After scanning a foot-high pile of city records detailing Councilman Ken Svoboda’s city contract to maintain landscaping in medians on 84th Street, one number jumped out: $185.

That’s how much the city paid Lincoln architectural firm Clark Enersen Partners per hour to oversee work on the medians. Clark Enersen designed and inspected the 84th Street medians.

Dang! Where can I apply?