ORCA Pool Grant 1: Status

[Blogger Note: This is the first part of a series of blogs planned on the ORCA pool grant. This grant started under Administrator Schrader in 2004. Work was "completed" about a year ago. The grant has not closed out yet. This first part details the current status. The next edition will discuss some history of the project.]

I recently saw a preliminary ranking for a Rio Grande Council of Governments 2007-2008 CD/CDS grant for thirteen area municipal and county organizations. One of the ranking columns is "Past Performance" and each entity was rated from 1 to 10 with ten being the best and indicating no project extensions, all reports done on time, and timely responses to monitoring requests.

Place	Entity	Score
1	Brewster County	10
	Hudspeth County	10
2	El Paso County	9
	Jeff Davis County	9
3	Valentine	8
	Dell City	8
4	Presidio County	7
5	Culberson County	6
	Horizon City	6
	Marfa	6
	Van Horn	6
6	Vinton	5
7	Alpine	4

Considering the ties, Marfa came in at 5th place out of 7. This is just one factor in considering grant applications. I mention it because how Marfa handles current grants affects the likelihood of future grants. Marfa is not handling the pool grant well. This could hurt Marfa's ability to get future grants from ORCA.

But wait! Didn't Marfa finish the pool grant last year? The closeout meeting was held in the Casner room on September 5th, 2006. That was more than eight months ago. The minutes for that public hearing have never been approved and filed, and the grant has not been closed yet because of unresolved "deficiencies" found by ORCA with the administration of the grant.

This is a serious situation that council should know about. Council should know about this crisis in the making so that they can take appropriate action to preserve the good name of Marfa with the various grant-awarding agencies. Council can only discuss what is on the agenda. The city administrator makes the agenda. The city administrator is also the grant administrator following his request and receipt of a $12,500 annual pay raise in mid-2005 specifically for grant administration. The city administrator has declined to place the status of this grant on the agenda for discussion. He has declined to report on the status in his "City Administrator's Report." He has kept the bad news from the council in hopes it would go away perhaps.

In ORCA's Close-out Document Worksheet, (revised 11/15/2006), seven deficiencies were listed with the grant close-out documents.



On February 2, 2007, ORCA's Compliance Division wrote to former Mayor Lanman about the Monitoring Review of the pool grant. ORCA stated that "contract records were generally in compliance" with several exceptions. The full text of this review can be seen by clicking on this PDF link: Monitoring Review. The five page document covered the following issues: (all quotes are from this document)

Financial Management:
"The city's accounting system is inadequate for tracking the receipts/expenditures of TxCDBG payments." The city was told to design a proper ledger and send it to ORCA with canceled checks. "Failure to provide this information could result in disallowed costs." That means Marfa pays ORCA back for poorly documented expenses.

"At the time of the close-out monitoring review of this contract, the city of Marfa had not documented any of its match commitment." Marfa was directed to supply documentation with "invoices, canceled checks, force account records." ORCA would review the documentation to see if it allowed the $26,300 match that Sauceda claimed but did not properly document. Marfa could be forced to pay ORCA this amount if it can not document the expenditures. Since Sauceda's "grant administration raise," he has been paid more than $20,000 to administer grants.

Labor Standards Review:
It appears that the electrical subcontractor underpaid their electricians by paying them $10.00 per hour when the contract called for Federal Labor Standards minimum wages of $12.14 for that type of work. Marfa was ordered to submit documentation that this payroll violation was corrected. "This finding will remain open until this documentation has been received and approved by Julie Hartley, Labor Specialist, ORCA."

Civil Rights Review:
ORCA found that the city had no record of required actions and public notices about fair housing, equal opportunity, grievance procedures and self-evaluation review as required by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The city was ordered to provide documentation. I believe Marfa paid the Border Hotline to publish some of these notices in April 2007!

Similarly, ORCA found no record that Marfa adopted the federally required policy against the use of excessive force during nonviolent civil rights demonstrations. This was put on the February 13, 2007 agenda along with the agenda item where the three former members of city council extended Sauceda's contract for nineteen months with a $27,083 severance package.

Administrative Review:
"The city does not maintain copies of all documents and records related to the activities of this TCDP contract at the city offices. The filing system for this contract was inadequate. Payroll reports had to be faxed from the contractor's office, the council minutes approving construction contractor and architect contracts were not available, employee interview reports were not available. The city must maintain at the city offices copies of all records sufficient to detail the TCDP contractual agreements and activities. These records must be available in accordance with the Texas Open Records Act." That quote is from ORCA not me. I don't understand. What's wrong with this filing system?



The city was ordered to provide "complete legible set of payroll reports and employee interviews for the prime and subcontractors" and "city council minutes" approving contracts for those contractors, and a "financial transaction register for the TCDP funds."

Close-out Review:
Close-out reports were incomplete relating to the Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) Report for Naismith Engineering and updated Disclosure Reports for all subcontractors.


It is clear that Administrator Sauceda started working on this list of deficiencies. Some postings were made in an Alpine paper. Some items were put on the agenda for council to consider without full disclosure of the magnitude of the problem. The office staff was sent on an emergency task to "find $26,000, I don't care where" in order to document the matching contributions that Sauceda had already claimed. While ORCA has shared much information following Open Records requests, I have not seen Sauceda's response to ORCA. ORCA asked Lanman to respond to this by March 5, 2007. I believe Sauceda requested extensions until March 27th. I don't know what documentation has been provided. According to a source at ORCA, "The extension granted to resolve the problems has already come and gone" with nothing new to report as of the first of May. The contract cannot be closed until the monitor review findings are resolved.

You might be reading this and thinking, "What's the big deal about some paperwork problems?" For one, Marfa may be forced to repay some grant money to ORCA, and this mismanagement will hurt Marfa's chances for future grants. On top of all that, the most important part of the pool improvement work HAS NEVER WORKED!

The Big Bend Sentinel covered the pool grant in an article on March 31, 2005, and reported, "The state closed the pool last year on account of an inferior chlorination system. The city obtained two public works grants to update the pool's chlorinator and..." At the time, Marfa was using a relatively dangerous gas chlorination system. A major part of the ORCA pool grant was to fund a replacement for this system to automatically chlorinate the water. The original ORCA contract from June 2004 stated that Marfa "shall make improvements to the city's existing swimming pool in order to meet state standards and health requirements. Contractor (City of Marfa) shall make renovations to the pump system, chlorination system, filtration system, electrical system, heater and gutter system."

The automated chlorination system at the pool is not working and has never worked. The pool was empty when it was installed. When the system was checked out after the pool was filled, it was obvious that it was not working. The system is based on chlorine tablets in a ten-gallon tank with pool water circulating through the tank to automatically adjust the chlorine level. Public works employees are maintaining the chlorine level by mixing granulated chlorine chemicals with water and adding this to the pool manually. Reports indicate that the failure of this system has been known by the city since the installation. The contractor has been paid. The system has never worked.

The grant has not closed out yet. Some of these deficiencies may be impossible to resolve. Sauceda gets an extra $1,042 a month just to administer grants for Marfa. What does Marfa get?

We get inadequate accounting systems, improper ledgers, undocumented claims for matching contributions, underpaid subcontractors, missing public notices and policies, missing records, inadequate filing systems, missing council meeting minutes, unapproved contractor contracts, missing reports, AND a chlorination system that does not work.