LET THE FINGER POINTING BEGIN

On June 30 a “Non Progress” report will be released and to no ones surprise it will show that the entire redevelopment project at Ground Zero is drastically behind schedule and over budget.

What is interesting is that even though everyone involved was aware of how poorly this project has been handled from day one they will have yet another report that will probably cost a few hundred thousand to put together that will be ignored as all others that have gone before it.

Christopher Ward, the new Executive of the Port Authority is already expected to ask for an extension as in his words he needs additional time “to sort out stakeholder accountability and gain insight on more than 20 unanswered policy, engineering, and design questions facing the reconstruction”

He will probably say that he needs a few months to put this together.

We can save him the time. There has never been any stakeholder accountability and that is why these well publicized problems exist today.

The finger pointing has already started.

The LMDC will blame it on the Port Authority.

The Port Authority will blame it on the Spitzer administration and they will blame it on unrealistic timelines set up by the Pataki Administration.

There is a lot of blame to go around but the bottom line is the two responsible parties are the LMDC and the Port Authority.

The LMDC has lined its pockets for the last seven years and has little to show for it.

One only has to look at the Deutsche Building to see how the LMDC handles things.

They put millions into taking it down and nothing happened so they bought the building for over $80 million and the Building still stands.

So now nearly seven years after the attack and after an accident that took the lives of two firefighters they say they need an additional $40 Million to complete the project.

Well if you believe that we have a bridge to sell you but that wouldn’t work either because then we would have to get the Port Authority involved.

This is the same “authority” that was given full control of the project because they had the skill and expertise to handle a project of this size.

That worked out well.

Anyone involved in project management knows that any time you should be able to report where the project is in regards to time and cost estimates.

But Chris Ward needs a couple of months to find out exactly where they are. Maybe he should give up his part time job and we might get the answer sooner.

What happened to the skill and expertise?

So we will get another report the findings of which will get media coverage for a few weeks and then get placed in the all important circular file.

And the LMDC will blame the PA who will blame previous administrations and good money will be thrown after bad and five years from now after billions of overruns the site will still not be completed.

Back in 2006 the Sciame Report was released to keep the cost of the Memorial under half a billion and the Memorial Foundation stated that it would “continue its efforts to refine the project’s base estimates, resolve all of the outstanding infrastructure cost issues with Port Authority and two, in cooperation with other key stakeholders, outline an array of ways to reduce project costs while maintaining the Arad/Walker vision for the Memorial. The Foundation believes that in order to move forward with construction, the City, the State, LMDC, Port Authority and the Foundation must all be on the same page”.

Has anyone checked lately?

Probably not But as long as all the stakeholders are on the same page we should all feel better.

For that appears to be the most important thing.

So we have the PA (Poor Accountability) and the LMDC (Let Me Double Check) on the job.

Let the finger pointing begin.

Related posts

Port Authority Offers to Build WTC Memorial and Museum 11/22/05

http://www.where-to-turn.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11812

THE DEFINITION OF DEVELOPMENT

http://www.where-to-turn.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=26576

ONE BY ONE THEY ALL WALK AWAY

http://www.where-to-turn.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=26670

World Trade Center Memorial Design - Sciame Report Released

http://www.putitaboveground.org/2006/06/20/world-trade-center-memorial-design-sciame-report-released/

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http://www.where-to-turn.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27884