FDD Disconnect Program

Thank you for your continuing coverage of the FDD program.

I wanted to write to you to provide a correction and some comment.

1. In your article you state, “Frank Burdick was appointed by Council to the SSWWE/FDD Citizens Advisory Committee charged with examining various aspects of the FDD program through a survey of residents in whose homes FDDs had been done.”

This statement needs to be corrected. The SSWWE CAC was not a CAC sanctioned by the Council and I was never appointed. It was established as a focus group by OHM Advisors per the “community outreach” aspect of their contract. All members were either volunteers or were invited by the city staff. Sabra Briere once told me, “ …Council has nothing to do with that CAC  (SSWWE CAC).  That CAC is just something that the consultant is doing….”

This brings to light a few major issues:

a. Unlike the Pedestrian Safety Task Force, fully sanctioned by Council,  the SSWWE was not sanctioned, and did not include any experts from the field.

b. OHM Advisors and Project Innovations steered the focus group towards their desired outcomes.

c. The City and some Council members are using some of these “outcomes” or recommendations as if they came directly from the CAC.  It is interesting that city staff and Council, now is so heavily relying on these recommendations when previously they have been ignored by Council, such as with the revised Radon Mitigation recommendations and other issues that were voted on by the remaining CAC members.  Now the City staff and Council are using these votes as a credible source.  It seems to me that if so much weight was going to given to these votes, than the City would have fully sanctioned the SSWWE CAC and included experts in Sanitary Sewer systems, Construction, legal experts, etc… on the CAC.

d. The SSWWE CAC began with 23 members.  By the end of 16  to 18 months, only seven of the original members remained. During the course of the “study,” only  12 members were somewhat active. In the final months, the City allowed two members onto the CAC—a developer and one of the FDD supporters, an active participant in the FDD CAC (a pre-existing task force.)   It is easy to presume that the City brought in their “ringers” so as to get the vote count up to meet their desired outcomes.  This ended up being the case, especially concerning Radon recommendations.

2.  A second major flaw with the OHM contract is the fact that Justin Woods is included as one of the OHM team members in the OHM proposal.  Justin Woods, a former CDM  Smith, Inc. employee, was one of the primary managers and inspectors of the FDD installations since approximately 2006.  Now, OHM has hired him and the City/OHM may be allowing him to go back and re-inspect the work that he oversaw and inspected in the first place! I suggest that you contact Council member Kailasapathy to discuss this.  She was concerned about this lack of  an “independent audit” during the Council session and made her statements clear.

3. A third major issue: The OHM Advisors’ contract with the City is valued at $587,020. This is excessive. This cost  is to re-survey 1,800 FDD installations and to make some hokey training video on how to maintain your sump pump.  Of these 1,800 locations, OHM is anticipating only small quantity will need to be corrected.  An estimate of 55 locations has been presented.  The $587,000 does not include the actual cost to make the corrections.  This cost will come later.  (Note, these costs for corrections should be the burden of the installing contractor and CDM Smith, Inc. However, I believe the City has no intention of back charging them for this.)

4. A fourth major issue, is the fact that the contract is being awarded to the sole bidder.  A review of the MITN website clearly shows that six to seven bidders were Plan Holders, but chose not to bid the work.  It is likely that these other contractors did not bid the work because of the controversy with the existing programs.

Frank Burdick

Ann Arbor