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?

Great Cartoon!

Neal Obermeyer has a hilarious cartoon on the opinion page of the Journal Star.

It's worse than I thought!

The Nebraska Democratic Party held a press conference today to let the world know about what kind of successful businessman Ken Svoboda really has been.

They revealed that there were multiple instances of Ken fulfilling his contacts and that he would often just not return the phone calls. Other times, he billed the city more than once for the same job.

According to the documentation provided, on at least five separate occasions, city staff gave Ken Svoboda ten days notice to comply with the terms of the contract or the contract would be terminated. In one letter, dated June 15, 2004, Mark Canney from the Parks and Recreation Department wrote Mr. Svoboda to inform him that the contracts were considered cancelled as of that date.

The Party’s investigation also found that city staff were required to go to great lengths to receive a response from Ken Svoboda following repeated phone calls concerning complaints and issues. On numerous occasions, Svoboda never returned their calls.

Developing...

Median troubles are nothing new for Svoboda

The Lincoln Journal Star has an extensive article today about how Ken Svoboda has had frequent problems with fulfilling his landscaping contracts with the city of Lincoln.

Letters between Svoboda and various city officials show that the city was displeased with his company’s performance on a number of contracts to install and maintain landscaping on certain city medians. Ray’s received written notices threatening to terminate the contracts unless it corrected problems with its work on medians on North 27th Street, West Highlands Boulevard, South 70th Street and 84th Street.

Eventually, it seems, Ken ceased all pretense of trying to do the job:

According to minutes of the meeting, “Jerry Ziems feels that he has done everything he can to get Ray’s Lawn and Home Care to complete this project and it has come to the point where Ken Svoboda from Ray’s Lawn and Home Care is no longer returning his phone calls. He believes there are only two options left: Public works can take legal action against Ray’s Lawn and Home Care or they can take the remaining money from the contract and hire someone else to complete the job.”

In the end, the City gave Ken one more chance and he reportedly spent the entire week doing the work himself.

You have to wonder if anybody other than a sitting city councilman would have received as many second chances.

Blame it on the poppy mallow

Apparently Ken Svoboda doesn't have a very green thumb.

Despite spending his entire life working in lawn care, Ken can't get a tiny little flower to grow. According to wikipedia, the poppy mallow "prefers a hot and dry situation."

Svoboda said the only reason he hasn’t completed the contract is the poppy mallow the city specified has been difficult to get established, even though it’s supposed to thrive in hot, sunny locations.

Excuses. Excuses. I'm sick of hearing excuses.

Even though he hasn't kept up his end of the deal, city hall has seen fit to extend the contract. You have to wonder if anybody other than a sitting city councilman would have been bent over backwards for like this. The one redeeming thing the city did is to make Ken put up some of his own money

Ray’s must provide the city with a $75,000 letter of credit, on which the city can draw if Ray’s defaults on the contract. The credit line would replace the performance bond, which contractors provide as a form of insurance that they will complete jobs. Performance bonds can be difficult to collect, however.

It's cut little flower and it's kicking Ken's butt. Is he really as tough as he'd lead us to believe?

City threatens to yank councilman’s contract

The Journal Star wrote an article that was the inspiration for this blog.

City Councilman Ken Svoboda has been threatened by the city of Lincoln with the revocation of his contract to mow lawns for the city.

His excuse?

“When I’m not there, things don’t get finished,” said Svoboda, who oversees the company’s landscaping division.

This is a guy who is talking about running for Mayor of Lincoln next year and he can't keep a few kids with lawn mowers on task when he's not around? How does he really expect to manage a city government with about 2000 employees and a budget of over $130 million?

How come political insiders keep making more money off of government while the tax payers keep getting stuck with the bill? This is just the sort of thing that chaps my hide. I'm going to keep an eye on Lincoln's medians for the next year. Ken better shape up or he's going to hear about it!