To the Editor:

The Westerlo Town Board held a workshop on Nov. 17 to address issues associated with the town hall and highway garage since the recent referendum in which the town board was denied authority to borrow up to $2.75 million to pay for a project of remodeling and renovating the town hall and replacing the highway garage.

A representative of Delaware Engineering, the firm the town board retained to advise on how best to address the needs of the two buildings, was present and addressed the town board and assembled residents on why the project that had been rejected was nonetheless the right one for the town.

This presentation was not well received. Instead, the residents in attendance pressed the town board with many questions along several lines, including:

— Even if the proposed project were the most efficient and economical way to get a proper town hall and highway garage, the big number for this project has been rejected, and likely would be rejected again if proposed again (not just because of the big number but because taxpayers don’t trust the town board with a project this big and complex) so would the town board develop a “Plan B,” which would do needed work in phases, keeping any single money commitment tolerable and letting the town board demonstrate it can manage and bring in on schedule and within budget a large, complex construction program?

— Since Delaware Engineering, when previously asked to develop such a Plan B, instead was only able to propose a poorer big project (e.g., a low-quality roof for the town hall, pole-barn rather than rigid-frame construction for the new highway garage) that still was estimated at over $2.3 million, would the town board look elsewhere (perhaps to the very capable Ed Lawson) to investigate and develop phased and/or more moderate approaches?

— Are there alternatives to the proposed approach of relocating the town court to the town hall?

— Would it be better to sell the town hall and either build a new one or consolidate the town hall and highway garage?

Unfortunately, there was no constructive response from the town board to the assembled residents to any of these questions. Instead, residents were ridiculed by Mr. [Alfred] Field or told, “You don’t know what you’re talking about” or, “You need to go back to school” by Mr. [William] Bichteman.

Under further questioning, it became clear that the plans and money estimates so far provided by Delaware Engineering are only estimates. The representative from Delaware Engineering made clear that they had not yet gone into the “design phase” where they’d actually determine how to do things like abate the asbestos in the town hall and what it would cost to do those things. This means the $2.75 million estimate will be replaced by another, possibly significantly higher, number once this “design phase” (for which Delaware Engineering will require further payment) is done.

This led to questioning about getting competit­ive bids for whatever work is needed. By law and common practice, this is done by preparing a request for proposals (or “RFP”), which states the functional specifications of the needed work and invites competent vendors to submit proposals which tell how they’d do the work and what they’d charge.

Mr. Bichteman’s response appears to have been that it’s against the law for the town to prepare an RFP and send it out for competitive bids. Instead, he pointed to the representative from Delaware Engineering and said they’d do what was needed.

This raises a major issue: If Delaware Engineering, which was retained and paid to advise the town, were to be allowed to transition into being the uncontested vendor to the town of this major project, this would appear to be a basic conflict of interest. You don’t have a vendor write your RFP, or even just let a vendor go ahead and sell the project it designed without any competition or consideration of alternatives, any more than you let the fox into the henhouse.

If the town board chooses to continue to pay Delaware Engineering to conduct its “design phase” and then go on to being paid to conduct the project they designed, the town would miss the opportunity to discover what other vendors could propose.

Since the town has insisted on competitive bids for far smaller projects, such as the recent remodeling of the library, it’s hard to understand why the town won’t now let various vendors offer their own proposals for how to get what’s really needed done, preferably without a huge commitment and without being locked into the particular approach Delaware Engineering is selling.

When this was stated, Mr. Bichteman decided he was done for the evening, and the workshop was adjourned.

However, all these issues remain open and will continue to be pursued by interested residents. Along the way, we all hope to see the town board finally realize the people who attend meetings are not enemies or fools, but residents and taxpayers trying to work constructively with the town board for the benefit of all of Westerlo.

Leonard Laub

Westerlo