Judge’s Lakeview Commons ruling may be appealed
By Kathryn Reed
It may not matter what South Lake Tahoe wants regarding Lakeview Commons. Reeve-Knight Construction has filed notice the company intends to appeal the judge’s decision that rendered its contract with the city invalid.
Multiple calls to the Roseville-based company went unreturned. However, City Attorney Patrick Enright confirmed Reeve-Knight has filed a notice to appeal.
Clark & Sullivan Construction in Sparks successfully sued the city over the bid process, which resulted in El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Steve Bailey issuing a decision Nov. 1 that blasted the city for its handling of the bid and rendered the contract null and void.
People may need to get used to this sign near El Dorado Beach. Photo/Kathryn Reed
People close to the issue have told Lake Tahoe News if Reeve-Knight goes through with the appeal, it’s likely the city will have another stalled construction project on its hands for what could be years with it tied up in legal wrangling.
One difference between this $6 million stalled project and the bankrupt/foreclosed could have been $400 million convention center project is location and functionality.
Lakeview Commons is in the center of town, and a highly trafficked area that is popular with locals and tourists. Access to El Dorado Beach is now cut off.
This compares to the convention center site near Stateline that impacts the players with money in the site, but does not take away an asset from people.
On Jan. 11 the City Council started their morning at 8 in closed session to discuss Lakeview Commons. Enright said no reportable action was taken, but in the same breath said a public hearing is scheduled for Jan. 25 to decide whether to start the bid process from scratch or to award the bid to Clark & Sullivan.
“Discussion in large part was whether to appeal the decision. We wanted this council to decide it,” Enright said of the closed session.
The city only had 60 days to appeal the decision. Tuesday’s session was 10 days after that deadline. This means it’s possible the council again violated the Brown Act by discussing litigation that isn’t relevant.
South Tahoe is also dealing with angry subcontractors on the project who have not been paid.
Dave Galicia, president of GB Construction in South Lake Tahoe and subcontractor for Reeve-Knight, spoke before the council Tuesday saying he submitted invoices to the city dated more than 120 days ago and has yet to see a dime.
Afterward he told Lake Tahoe News, “They are arguing over $35,000.” Galicia said Reeve-Knight billed the city for $140,000 for the work done at the site and the city offered $105,000.
Enright confirmed the city has not paid Reeve-Knight any money.
“We are negotiating with them,” Enright said.
He cited Public Contract Code that requires the city to pay hard costs, but not profits on a contract that has been rendered invalid.
Enright expects that aspect of the issue to be voted on by the council Jan. 25 – the same day it is scheduled to decide how to go forward with the bid. The latter, of course, may be a mute point depending on what Reeve-Knight does.
THe city employees that made this mess in the first place, what happened to them?
Did they get fired?
How do you do so wrong and get away with it?
Easy answer, Pub: work for a government entity. You’re untouchable there.
Oh good grief.
Send in the clowns…. don’t bother they’re hereeeeee
Why would the city not pay what was owed for work done? The contract was manipulated, both sides participated in the manipulation and were found out….shame on those who did the deed, but pay the contractors and get on with it. We need to finish what was planned. Another plan would be to be in perpetual litigation….who wins then?
Here we go again? Blasting the City for no good reason. Councilwoman Claire Fortier even said herself that large mistakes were NOT necessarily made. This is a squabble over a small contract adjustment and the entire blame for the mess should be placed on Clark and Sullivan. They are the ones who chose to sue because they weren’t awarded the contract. Now, because of these crybabies, El Dorado beach will be closed for two years. I hope they decide to re-bid and the contract doesn’t go to Clark and Sullivan. Then they would have wasted their money and everyone’s time for no reason whatsoever!
OMG ! Blasting the City for no good reason?
The Good Old boys Bid Process was blasted by Superior Court Judge Steve Bailey.
The Good Old Boys in a Brown Act closed meeting, no doubt wanted to appeal the Judges decision.
Not paying sub contractors for work done, come get with it
Clark and Sullivan realized how the SLT machine works and apparently is still working.
e.diddy !!! Your name please.
This city is over its head on every project it gets involved with. Staff is not qualified to protect the public interest. There is no cost benefit to their projects and the people in charge keep getting salary increases until they retire at 90% of their highest pay, almost always their last year of work when their pay goes up 25% plus. The city should pay now or pay more later to everybody.
Why any company would be so stupid to do business with South Lake Tahoe city is beyond GOOD Reasoning.
There is a lack of honest competence and order here.
Who in the hell is the LEADER HERE IN CITY BUSNESS DEALING,Think we are all tired of the fingering each others titles who’s suppose to do what excuses.
No one seems to be Responsible for their action,blows it off till another Fine day.
While I’m venting ,please who’s ever responsible for the city streets works to please kick it up a notch widening the streets while there’s no traffic on the back roads in the State line area where all the traffic at,and please if your going to fuel these rotors (eaters )up use, at least please use half the machines intake to widen,it’s a waste of time, money, only to open 2 foot on streets that are narrow full these 100 lbs. boulders of snow you leave in the road way.
Where’s Tom F. ?..please Tom ….send a email tell them how clear the streets.
And you got this information from where? Oh, yeah…right here from this website. Go ahead and believe everything you read on this site.
It’s actually very entertaining listening to ya’ll rant on and on about your conspiracy theories and misinformation. But the fact is that this site is a spin-off of Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity hate mongering and ya’ll are buying into it.
Just because K.Reed prints it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Her biased opinion is about as entertaining as the “George Bush is responsible for 9-11” conspiracy hunters…
Boy e.diddy, equating Kae Reed w/ Rush Limbaugh & Sean Hannity is the ultimate stretch!! What are the facts? A judge, not a website, stopped the project! You can blame it on a contractor suing, but if that’s the reason the project is stopped, gee couldn’t any contractor stop any project they wanted to just by filing a lawsuit!
If the City didn’t screw up, (I mean bottom line the project got stopped after a big groundbreaking ceremony!) then who’s to blame for the inability to come to a legally binding agreement with a contractor?
I’m not saying K.Reed is Hannity or Limbaugh. I’m just saying this site is similar in the sense that one person can cause such an uproar by printing a one sided and biased opinion.
I just like playing the other side of the coin. It seems to me like the City missed a loophole in the contract (30% of the work performed by the contractor and not sub-contracted out) and Clark & Sullivan pounced on it like rabid dogs. In reality, it probably wasn’t a big deal, but now it’s a huge deal because of the lawsuit. And look at the hoopla that has been made out of it because people read the “news” on this site and flip out…It’s pretty entertaining!
Why are most of the letters so compilmentary to the city? That is right, the city can do no wrong?
People don’t flip out on this site.
When we all go to bed, wake up,not a damn thing changed.
You can never buy back time,that’s the problem.
You can replace all the cash,the waste,the words,but time free to waste till your sand allot gone through the hour glass.
In business, time is money lost.
So when the big machines,crews,permits,studies,planning are all on a time allotted PLAN ,IT’S SUPPOSE TO HAPPEN TO FIGURE WHAT THE REAL COST WILL BE.(that’s been lost and now more has to be added to all aspects of cost.)
The city throws too many wrenches in the projects around here,look what we got! More court ,more cash,more time lost.
If the projects around here were the human body in surgery, we would all bleed to death.
Pretty simple.
Gears don’t work if there’s a missing tooth.
We need a “skilled manager” that knows his or her Stuff,forwards,backwards with confidence.
I’m looking forward to the January 25th meeting on this, hoping to find out why Claire Fortier saw fit to say that there was ‘no big mistakes made’. A multi-million dollar contract called into question and court is, in and of itself, a big mistake especially when a Judge had to weigh the legalities, not the parties to the contract.
It would do all the new & existing City Council members to review Council video the day the contract was awarded; in spite of reservations (and testimony) about contract improprieties, they went ahead and voted for it anyway.
The suggestion about the video review also includes Council ‘testimony’, as a couple of specific comments that day, in their obvious bias, made the Judge’s decision all the more understandable, if not gratuitous, in deciding what he did.
If there is an appeal, not fulfilling the very obvious need to simply rebid the entire project, there are specific questionable comments from that day that will cause an ‘amicus brief’ to be sent to the court in clarification of Reeve-Knight’s direction of ‘vexatious litigation’, in furthering unnecessary delay of redoing El Dorado Beach. . .
Just ‘wipe the slate clean’ and start over again. . .with good faith intact.
Do whatever needs to be done to move the project along, if that means rebidding the whole job, then do it.
Can bidding be done anonymously, so most of the bias is out of the equation?
Well, at least e.diddy can formulate and spell an entire sentence. Hysterical to see how the “public” opinion is so badly spelled. Maybe you could write for the Tribune. Nobody seems to bother to spell check or grammar check.
I for one have every confidence in City staff to see this through and complete the project. Contractor’s are not the angels some of the folks in this comment strand seem to think they are. Even a loophole issue could be worked out with the right mindset of the contractor. It’s not unheard of unless they’re completely unreasonable.
Have a good weekend everyone.