Three Metropolis Council members are calling for an impartial audit of town’s Public Works Division — amid issues about mission execution and transparency surrounding main infrastructure processes which have dogged town for the previous a number of years.
Councilmembers Sukh Kaur (D1), Teri Castillo (D5), and Marina Alderete Gavito (D7) put out a joint assertion Tuesday asking on Metropolis Supervisor Erik Walsh to provoke the evaluate in response to residents’ issues about “communication, mission execution, and the transparency of infrastructure processes.”
“The voices of our neighborhood are clear: they want higher communication, a clearer course of, and sooner responses from the Public Works Division,” mentioned Kaur, who leveraged residents’ frustration with building delays on the St. Mary’s strip to unseat an incumbent again in 2023.
Since then, issues concerning the division have been so persistent {that a} group of native enterprise homeowners shaped a political motion committee to begin pushing for adjustments final 12 months.
Longtime Public Works Director Razi Hosseini introduced plans to retire in September, after public backlash to town’s dealing with of tasks surrounding the Remaining 4 match. Extended building main as much as that occasion prompted town to spend $800,000 on momentary sidewalks for the match that it deliberate to later take away.
The council members requesting the audit requested that it present a “complete evaluation” of the 182 tasks authorized within the metropolis’s $1.2 billion 2022 bond. Additionally they desire a evaluate town’s Infrastructure Administration Program and its public request system for infrastructure enhancements.
“As a council, we’re accountable stewards of residents’ taxpayer {dollars} — we owe it to them to carry our departments to a excessive commonplace of transparency and accountability,” Alderete Gavito mentioned. “This evaluate is a much-needed step to enhance our processes, ship on our commitments of residents’ wants, and guarantee we keep inside finances.”
An inside metropolis audit carried out final 12 months discovered that the Public Works division’s longer-term tasks suffered from “inconsistent communications efforts,” which auditors attributed to “noncomprehensive insurance policies and procedures.”
The division created a corrective motion plan that features a digital dashboard with info on present bond building tasks, informational internet pages for main tasks and the flexibility for workers so as to add street closure info to the Waze navigation app.
