objections

I have no problem with meeting the ADA requirements, making the bathrooms wheelchair accessible, raising up the bathrooms to meet flood plain or hooking up the bathrooms so they actually may be of some use to our residents one day.

I object STRONGLY to paying outrageous fees that are THREE, FOUR, SIX, or SEVEN times the usual and customary charges !!!!! One expensive change order after another costing us HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of our tax dollars!!! How can it be that a financially irresponsible cast of characters with a CONSISTENTLY QUESTIONABLE and VERY EXPENSIVE record of past building projects is EVEN CONSIDERED to build a multi-million-dollar gym? The cast of clowns that cant build a BATHROOM for less than TRIPLE the usual costs is somehow going to magically build a structure THIRTY TIMES as big as the bathrooms on time and on budget??? IMPOSSIBLE!! WONT HAPPEN!!! WHY are we NOT voting on this? If they truly believe a new gym is the will of the people, let the people speak, once and for all, settle it. This has been shoved down our throats by Bain, Borgemann, and Garcia. Who has that recall petition?

I haven't heard yet from the Tax Assessors office how much our property values have decreased officially but I read that nationally it was 14% in the first three quarters and another 15-20% is expected by the end of the year. The only good thing about this is that our taxes will go down and the politicians will have less to give away to their friends.

I was hoping that the City officials were just incompetent and naive but I got over that thought quickly. If I can have new building done for $130 a square foot and the City pays THREE times that, which they have done consistently in the past three years, where is the $260 a square foot going? If the normal profit margins for new construction in Dade County is 25% why are we paying 200%, 300%, 600% and more for the City construction? We KNOW it doesn't COST that, where is that money going? I can only conclude that there are many hands stretched out for their share of the profits.

Do I believe the bids are rigged? They start in the stratosphere and go up considerably into the preposterous-phere from there.

One example is the Country Club enclosure. The opening bid was 150k. That figure includes $300 a square foot estimation, a profit margin that ANY contractor would take ALL DAY LONG. The costs went up from there and the hard costs to actually construct the 520 square feet was over $315,000, which figures out to OVER $600 a square foot. TWO WALLS. Two walls were already in place and all that was needed was to tie them together. We have 30 cent tiles in the window sills there. We paid for a Rolls Royce and received a Yugo, a serviceable vehicle but nothing close to what we paid for. If I pay Taj Mahal prices I don't expect to stay at the Motel Six.

The same thing is happening with the bathrooms. We are getting hosed, again.

The other 85k went for tables, chairs, a new bar, and some renovations.