RALEIGH -- Seven months after the City Council voted to halt spending on a stalled downtown public safety center, the controversial project could cost Raleigh taxpayers several hundred thousand more dollars that were never finalized with a contract.
The council will consider today whether to spend about $455,000 for three months worth of construction drawings of the Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center, a proposed 17-story tower.
That's just a portion of a nearly $2.5 million contract amendment for architectural work the council approved in December.
But the eight-member council deadlocked on the $205 million project March 2, and voted then to stop any funding or planning work.City staffers didn't finish processing the amendment until the day after the council's vote, when it was too late to sign and make it binding.
State law requires that "All contracts made by or on behalf of a city shall be in writing." Because no formal agreement was signed, the council has no legal obligation to pay for the work, though it is likely to do so, adding to the $23 million the city already has spent on the project.
But some council members aren't happy about it. They're disturbed that three months of work went on without a signed agreement, though City Manager J. Russell Allen says such a delay is common for complex city agreements.
"I think it's very problematic if we're authorizing things and not getting contracts expedited," said Councilman Thomas Crowder, an architect who voted against the Lightner Center. "In my personal experience, when I do work for governmental agencies, it doesn't take three months to get a contract signed. You should not be doing work without a signed agreement. I'm looking forward to having a very thorough discussion on this matter."
Allen says the city typically doesn't start working with outside designers or planners until an initial contract is signed, but amendments to those contracts often are complex and take weeks to finalize.
The city manager also said that to have an agreement ready when the council approved the issue would be "presumptuous" since the council could change the nature of the agreement or discard it altogether.
"As a matter or time, that's not what everyone's focused on," he said. "We're focused on getting the work done."
Councilman Bonner Gaylord, who also voted against the Lightner Center and sparred with Mayor Charles Meeker about the project at a council meeting this year, said not having a formal agreement ready before or shortly after work begins opens the door to subjective spending decisions later.
"How do we determine what's fair in terms of what we've received as a product?" Gaylord said. "There's just a lot of subjectivity to it."
Meeker said it's not ideal for work to be done without formal approval, but it's common for professionals to render service before final contracts are signed.
The $455,000 bill before the council is for work done by KlingStubbins, an architecture and engineering firm, and its subcontractors from Dec. 1 through Feb. 28. No work was done after the council's March vote, Allen said.
Efforts to reach representatives with KlingStubbins were unsuccessful.
Cost of $205 million
The Lightner Center has been the council's hottest issue for the past year. As designed, it would stand 17 stories high, offer 300,000 square feet of space for fire, police, emergency communications and information technology departments in a downtown plot that borders Nash Square. It would be the biggest and most expensive building the city has erected for its use.
The Lightner Center 's $205 million price includes the $23 million the city has already spent on design and buying buildings for relocating police during construction. The city can borrow only $135 million without raising property taxes. The initial proposal would have required an 8 percent property tax increase, which didn't sit well with many in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The project was criticized for costing too much and requiring the tax increase.
Meeker later proposed a scaled back version of the project, which also stalled.
The four council members who oppose the measure - Crowder, Gaylord, Russ Stephenson and John Odom - do so for different reasons. The issue surfaced several times throughout the summer, and Odom, the council's lone Republican, was for a while thought to be the possible swing vote.
Meeker said he doesn't plan to bring it up again until he has a fifth vote.
