Eleventh Hour City Training Contract Called Legal with No Wrongdoing

This was submitted as a guest post by Dan Jehl, coordinator for Fort Wayne Public1 and writer for Frost Illustrated. You should also take the time to read Kalb’s and Spaulding’s posts on what transpired.

It was called the “eleventh hour” contract and the “lame duck” contract. And it’s about tax dollars. Both the circumstances and timing surrounding this contract never did pass the public’s sniff test. And now, nearly six months later, it was in the sights of the public’s radar—the City Council-the very arena many claim it should have been brought months ago.

This contract is between the City of Fort Wayne and High Performance Government Network for $95,000 a year for three years to continue training of city employees and develop a strategic plan to save millions of dollars. The contract is essentially the same people who were previously doing the training as city staff. The contract was not sent to City Council for review.

The contract is with a firm loaded with former City Administration staff. And the contract was signed on the second to the last work day of the year and end of Mayor Graham Richards’s term, the day after the Purdue Bowl Game, and four days before Mayor Tom Henry’s inauguration.

Expectations ran high. All media were present with cameras set and ready for fireworks. Some expected Council Dems to toss the soft balls, and the Council Repubs to throw the curves. But it was the straight fastballs from both sides of the aisle that caused the City Officials the most trouble.

A High Performance Explanation

Note: See John B. Kalb’s post on the HPGN contract here

The Common Council heard “testimony”, in Councilman Mitch Harper’s words, about the High Performance Government Contract that was agreed to in the waning days of the Graham Richard administration.

The basic gist of the High Performance Government Network’s formation is that the City of Fort Wayne had reportedly honed its processes, procedures and altered its modus operandi into a lean, mean, green/black (belt) fighting machine over the 8 years of the Richard administration, reportedly saving about $3 million per year in that span. Two employees in particular, Ryan Chasey and Kate Love-Jacobson, were said to be particularly instrumental.

The rub, however, is that the two would be leaving the city. As the sensei of Sigma, Chasey and Kate-Jacobson were contracted through the HPGN to provide the City of Fort Wayne with $80,000 worth of specialized Network services for the City of Fort Wayne solely and with another $15,000 Fort Wayne would become a member of the Network.

A Cynics View Of Canyon Cliffs Negotiation

So tomorrow ACRES will sit down to negotiate with Bodenhafer and Mike Thomas to see if they can purchase the property in order to preserve it for common good. ACRES has acknowledged they are willing to pay market value so what might the hold up be? Well the cynic in me sees two potential roadblocks:

The city sees this as an opportunity to expand their sewage empire and bring relief to a housing division that badly needs it. With the engineers firmly behind the project you can bet the administration is pushing for development as well.
This project isn’t about Canyon Cliffs - it’s about all the future development that will inevitably follow. The developer knows this and they know it will be difficult to get the next big ~~payday~~ project if a compromise is reached with ACRES

Good luck to ACRES and hopefully Bodenhafer and Thomas make the right decision

Sylvester’s Complaint

At the meeting of the Allen County Election Board this afternoon was a veryeasy-going discussion about Mike’s complaint. The three-member board unamimously agreed that the credit-card non-report was a violation. They also, unanimously agreed that, since the party filed a corrected revised report, that they did not need to take any further action.

Attendees were asked to identify themselves and ask any questions or make any statements. Some in attendance did so, with all questions answered and one disagreement recognized.

The summary statement by the three members was, “we are a complaint-driven board - not a policy-setting group”.

Pat Roller’s Excuses

Pat Roller’s “Command Performance” as City Council tonight was the normal Pat saying, “I did everything right, if you don’t believe me, just ask me!

She tried to convince the council that the decision to enter into the “legal” but probably “not ethical” contract without consultation with incoming Mayor Henry(in 4 days)with HPG was hers alone, with no prompting from King Richard. Her personel reason for entering into this contract was because ”our state governor gave us a $14 million hole in our 2008 city budget”. Her excuse for not involving the incoming mayor was that Henry was too busy to bother him with such a small item as a three(or is it four) year contract , spending “only” $285,000 and then at only $95,000 per year - with the first payment due before January 1, 2008!

The “deliverables” were questioned - no one produced the “secret” page 2 to the contract - and these were described as “training of city employees”. At no time was this training ever identified as to what was being covered. The only reference was to Graham Richard’s 4 day Leadership Development Roundtables involving nearly 300 City employees.

After the meeting, I talked with Kate Love-Jacobson and Bryan Casey about the training. Kate informed me that HPG DOES NOT DO “Lean Six Sigma training for the city - that is done by Total Quality Management, another private organization with close ties to King Richard. If that is so, JUST WHAT IS HPG DOING TO EARN the $95,000 per year? Bryan and Kate indicated in the meeting that they will be furnishing the council with a list of the “delivered” items have been since late December, 2007.

I can hardly wait to see what this “gobble-de-gook” consists of!

FWCS Interview Reaction

One reader just chimed in and said that Don Schaab completely bombed his school board interview tonight. This person is a strong Code Blue supporter as well so it really must’ve gone badly for Schaab. The reader also thought he might not get a single vote out of the six - ouch.

I’ll post more if it comes in or you can leave your own comments here…

ACRES May Have A Chance

Deciding the fate of Canyon Cliffs (News-Sentinel)

Developer Mike Thomas is scheduled to meet with ACRES land trust staff Wednesday to discuss selling 139 acres to the group instead of dividing the land into 28 high-end residential building lots.

ACRES, which manages 40 nature preserves in northeast Indiana, often receives donations of land or buys them for a fraction of their likely sale value. In this case, ACRES isn’t anticipating any price breaks.

“We’re thinking it’s going to be a fair-market-value price,” said Executive Director Jason Kissel.

The meeting between ACRES and Thomas is scheduled the day before the Allen County Plan Commission is supposed to decide on two key questions. The answers would advance or hinder development plans for the controversial Canyon Cliffs project, which resulted in 7 1/2 hours of public hearings last week.

Help A Blogger Out

Today will bring quite a bit of newsworthy material for those that care about local government - from the election board, to FWCS interviews, to a city council investigation into the HPGN contract. These are issues we’ve tried to cover extensively here at FWP and typically I’d be all over this stuff but unfortunately my schedule will prevent me from attending or viewing any of these meetings.

Because of this I’m asking the readers (and other contributors) to help out. Feel free to summarize, editorialize or comment in anyway you see fit on these events and send me an e-mail. I’ll post any submissions here tomorrow night for everyone to read. They can remain anonymous if you wish and they can be as brief or detailed as you want. This doesn’t have to take up your whole night - if you attend/watch any of the above meetings then just drop me a line and tell me what you think.

I know this is a last minute request but think of it as community service - if you don’t help out then the only perspective the rest of us will get is what we read in the traditional media. Also, if you’re a blogger and you post a story then please send me an e-mail and I’ll make sure to link to it here…

Unanswered Questions On High Performance Government Network Contract

I’ve summarized my own list of questions that I hope city council will get answers to during their investigation of the HPGN contract. For those that might be seeing this story for the first time, or just want a refresher on what it’s all about, feel free to read our previous posts.

The gist of what happened here is that outgoing mayor Graham Richard executed a 3 year $95k/year contract during the final days of his administration. The contract went to the HPGN group whose senior staff is entirely made up of former city employees, most of which reported directly to the mayor. Today’s council meeting will give the former administration a chance to explain their decision, and this contract, to the citizenry.

Also if you have your own questions you’d like answered then please add them in the comments section.

What exactly did we get for the $95k spent in 2007? Could we have possibly received training in 2007 considering the contract was executed on December 27th?
Can a mayor spend taxdollars for the city to join an organization? Doesn’t the expenditure have to actually go towards some good or service?
Is the mayor being compensated in any way, including book sales, by the HPGN?
What is the justification for the contract being worth $95k? Have they charged other cities similar amounts? What criteria was used in coming up with the $95k figure?
Was this contract discussed or worked on by any current employee of HPGN
Was Joe Kimmel the current corporate counsel for the city when he signed the contract as an attorney representing HPGN?
Was Kimmel involved in any discussions and/or work related to the contract while employed by the city?
Aren’t we really just paying for training that’s already been implemented by mayor Richard’s administration during their local government 6 sigma push?
Who specifically wrote up the contract and why is it such a bare-bones document that doesn’t detail a single deliverable?
Did anyone in the administration voice any concerns about this contract?

Answering these questions would be a good start in alleviating public concerns. If the organization really can save the city millions of dollars then I’m all for it, but I would still like to see what the measurables are…

FWCS Interview & Potential Tie Vote

The Fort Wayne Community School board will meet on Tuesday to publicly interview the two candidates vying to replace Carol Coen who is resigning after having moved from her district. I’m certain three of the board members (Corona, Martin-Diaz, GiaQuinta) will vote for John Peirce, leader of the failed Yellow petition drive, while two members (Brown, Olinger) are likely to vote for Code Blue supporter and former board member Don Schaab.

That means the swing vote could very well be Mitch Sheppard. I have a hard time imagining her standing up and voting against Mark GiaQuinta but I suppose we shall see. If the board deadlocks on a 3-3 vote then, oddly enough, the decision would be made by Allen County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Felts ( IC 20-23-4-30).

The interview will take place at 5:30pm at the Grile Administration Center on 1200 S Clinton.

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