City of Lancaster severs “bonds” with Gallagher Construction

by Jeff Melcher

On Monday, August 27, the City Council of Lancaster will hold its semi-weekly meeting. The agenda indicates that the council will hold public hearings on the city budget and the proposed tax rate – a process so far much less dramatic than the parallel effort by Lancaster schools. The proposed tax rate is just under 74 cents per hundred dollars in valuations. Local Public Improvement Districts (PID) fee rates and spending plans are also on the agenda.

An interesting item of business is quietly slotted in between the consent agenda and the tax rate hearings. Item 4 may award a professional services contract to the construction company AJ Duffy to complete the 2005 city bond projects. The projects, visibly underway south of the High School along Dallas Avenue, include the Senior Center and Public Safety (police station) Building. These projects were originally awarded to the same contractor managing the Lancaster ISD 2004 school bond projects: Gallagher Construction.

Pre-meeting information prepared by city staff offers the following background:

“As a result of various concerns from our construction manager, the architects, and the city, Gallagher Construction Management Services has voluntarily resigned from the project. With our limited staff and a large work load it is virtually impossible for us to use existing staff to oversee these major construction projects.“ Background data goes on to address several hundred thousand dollars worth of cost differences between Gallagher’s proposed services and the cost expected from Duffy.

Sources working for the city, refusing to be named or to provide direct comment, nevertheless agreed with the characterization of the problem with Gallagher’s oversight as involving “scope creep” in design and material specification.

The city’s projects, approved in 2005, totaled $16.8 million.

Gallagher continues to serve at contracting manager for the Lancaster ISD remaining 2004 bond projects. The most current project information (squint hard, you can still make it out … ) shows $3.2 million in remaining work to be done on some 12 capital and 7 “minor” projects. The school district has budgeted only $2.7 million towards those partly completed efforts. There has been no public discussion on changing project managers on the school projects, nor confirmation of any “scope creep”.

Von and Jerry Gallagher and Lisa Ellrich-Gallagher all share associate memberships in the Texas Association of School Administrators. The Gallaghers maintain good relationships with local board members and have been generous supporters of district efforts to pass additional bond referendums in the past three elections. One of projects Gallagher completed, the Lancaster High School, was recently awarded honors by that Texas Association of School Administrators, (TASA) for Design, Value, and Educational Appropriateness. (Strangely, neither this nor the Lancaster Houston Elementary schools are listed among Gallaghers “recently completed” projects.

But as the City of Lancaster readies itself for a bond election in November 2007 on a number of projects to include “pedestrianways… storm drainage facilities,video roadside cameras, street lighting, streetscape and median improvements,… “ etc, staff appears to want to distance themselves from earlier projects.

AJ Duffy has served both the city and the school district as a subcontracter and has been well regarded by both, although Duffy does not appear among members of TASA.

In other city business on the agenda, Kimberly Lankford’s resignation is noted and an election for her successor is to be scheduled for November.

This story was submitted by a member of the Pegasus News community.