Photo Source: City of Scottsdale
In a city with generally very few significant issues, sometimes relatively banal topics can turn into small firestorms, flashpoints of controversy and argument. Terminally online Scottsdalians can likely attest that there are a few such cases that are blowing up now, and of course they involve traffic.
One example is a revamp of Scottsdale Road near Jomax in North Scottsdale which has been planned out for years now, but is currently projected to end up at three times the cost as originally planned. The other is a roundabout also on Scottsdale Road in North Scottsdale, also coming in at about 3x original estimates.
While some of the criticisms related to roundabouts come off as a bit silly, the typical “This is so difficult! How can we learn this?” silliness that accompanies anything that is remotely new, such significant overruns on several projects should be concerning, especially for a fiscally responsible city such as Scottsdale.
Inflation in the wake of the pandemic could certainly explain some of this; after all, the cost of essentially everything is far higher than it was five years ago. A 50% cost overrun could easily be explained by this; but triple the projections? You can’t simply pin it on inflation, especially now that it has effectively normalized.
So how does the city fix this? Obviously billing overruns can’t generally be fixed in arrears, mistakes are mistakes. The number of bids on these contracts were minimal, which might head us off to a different problem. But as far as those bids go, hopefully this should be a lesson in incentivization insofar as city contracts are concerned. Perhaps this is a teachable moment for city managers, a lesson that benchmarks and incentives should be in place to reward staying within budget. For instance, a 20% award for staying in budget is always preferable to being 200% over budget.
While sometimes complaints are general unhappiness looking for an outlet, it is a positive that there are eyes on these sorts of fiscal concerns, and it is our hope that it offers lessons for the future.