TKC EXCLUSIVE!!! NEW KCI RESOLUTION DEMANDS BIDDING TRANSPARENCY DESPITE AVIATION HONCHO DEFIANCE!!!

Legislation concerning the construction of New KCI hopes to shed light on how project is taking shape along with identifying the construction companies involved in the process.

Checkit:

Resolution 200330: "Directing the City Manager to present to the Transportation, Infrastructure, and Operations Committee information related to all bids submitted in response to the procurement of contracts for the new terminal at the Kansas City International Airport."

Now, here's the bad news . . .

IN AN E-MAIL INTERCEPTED BY AWESOME TKC TIPSTERS, KANSAS CITY AVIATION HONCHO PAT KLEIN CLAIMS BIDDING TRANSPARENCY WILL DELAY NEW KCI!!!

Actually, the e-mail is subject to Freedom of Information Act requests and it's circulating widely around City Hall before today's crucial vote. Local media is simply too scared to talk about a discussion worth HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS that has more than a few moving parts and very serious people concerned about the fate of the stalled facility.

 And so, in order to defend the status quo . . .



Pat Klein, Director of Aviation wrote . . .

"This request would require tremendous amounts of time, cost and TIO time to do a look back since Edgemoor has gotten on board. There could be upwards of 100 solicitations and RFPs. Each solicitation/RFP has multiple proposers and within those are multiple tiers of subs. To have the team go back and pull all those documents, prepare them for a public discussion, pull together a powerpoint, present to Council would be astronomical and take time away from the team whose job is to complete this project on-time and on-budget. This request would easily risk breaking our budget and scheduled opening. Additionally, each TIO meeting would probably only be able to handle 1 procurement given the other business so you are then looking at 100 TIO meetings to look back?

"We obviously want to provide this Mayor and Council the information they need to govern but this request has impacts that will negatively affect this project delivery . . . "

The response to this concern from insiders is that all of the information requested could be compiled into one, simple Excel spreadsheet.

Again, this debate is crucial for taxpayers and local residents. Sadly, the conversation was bungled in an initial report that focused on minority hiring and immediately lost more than half of readers not wanting to get into a diversity debate. Again, as always, we remind our TKC Blog Community that GREEN IS THE ONLY COLOR THAT REALLY MATTERS. This should really be a conversation about oversight and accountability, not another pointless culture war slap fighting. 

To wit . . . 

Here's a part of the big money, fun component of the story that's going to earn more attention starting today . . .

ONE OF THE NEW KCI COMPANIES LEADING CONSTRUCTION IS AWARDING ITSELF EPIC CONTRACTS WORTH MILLIONS!!!

This is one of many good reasons why THIS RESOLUTION IS A GOOD IDEA given the abysmal level of reporting and information available to the public regarding the mysterious project worth HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS and already costing taxpayers big bucks.



Accordingly, and because the vote is going to be close . . .

KANSAS CITY MAYOR & COUNCIL WILL NOW DECIDE TO IF TAXPAYERS DESERVE NEW KCI TRANSPARENCY OF IF THEY'LL ENDORSE SKETCHY &  SECRETIVE BIDS!!!

Developing . . .