MMPI GETS $1 MILLION PER QUARTER WITH NO DETAILS

Submitted by Roldo on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 13:27.

I find the way MMPI bills Cuyahoga County for its monthly “fee” an example of bad management taken to extreme. The billings tell the County nothing of what MMPI does for its healthy fee.

 

Here’s what the entire “invoice” from MMPI says as a description of what it did for $333,333.33 – or a penny shy of $1 million every three months:

“Const. Mgmt/Developer fee - $333,333.33. Total due $333,333.33.”

 

That’s it. Pretty much a blank sheet of paper.

 

No mention of what work might have been done. No mention of how many people did what. No mention of money paid out by MMPI. No mention of hours worked. Not a shred of documentation. Nothing. Nada.

 

Now that’s the way to be able to bill a client. Sweet.

 

Just take our word for it, says MMPI. We’ve been giving you $333,333.33 worth of service this month. And on every 15th of the month the bill comes. And we pay. Now, since March, MMPI has pocketed $2.3 plus million. So every quarter another $1 million goes from the County to MMPI on a fee basis.

 

You’d think that Tim Hagan would have learned the lesson from Gateway when he and Mike White allowed the construction of the arena to go forward BEFORE they got the signature of George and Gordon Gund on line to occupy the Gateway arena.

 

Having started construction, the Gunds had them over a barrel. And they rolled that barrel over and over again until they got as sweet a sweetheart deal as one could get. Now Dan Gilbert enjoys the same sugary deal.

 

MMPI, Hagan warns now, could walk away from the Medical Mart/Convention Center deal.

 

Wish that they would.

 

That $80 million or so collected on the quarter percent sale tax increase could go for better uses. Might even bring Public Auditorium to its former state.

 

The County also has a letter from MMPI attesting to other costs, $2,443,573 from “its pre-construction design building and various consultants for performing work on the feasibility plans, as described in Section 2.3 of the Development Agreement dated April 16, 2009, according to a July 15th letter to the County’s project director Barbara Shergalis. This is based on a request I made for documentation of billing.

 

The County does have backup documentation describing the different tasks that require $2.4 million in payment.

 

But this loose “fee” of a third of a million bucks every three months, worked out by the County and Fred Nance of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, strikes me as the kind of an accounting that skips accounts. It allows a profit without a clear explanation of what the clients – we taxpayers – are getting for our money.

 

Hagan likes this kind of accounting for his friends of the Kennedy clan. The rest of us shouldn’t. It becomes more unacceptable as time goes by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hasn't Nance written all these bad deals for the public?

Starting during the White admin, Nance has hosed the public for a cool $ billion by now, just on these big box scams.

Wonder what that has been worth to him... I'm sure he and his family are sitting pretty but how is the view from up there?

I wonder what any of this has been worth to any of these sell-outs, really.

A few million to a few immoral lawyers here and there, to sell 1,000,000s of people down the river.

Disrupt IT

If they had 32M that they

If they had 32M that they are not going to spend on Public Auditorum, why aren't they dealing in good faith with the 113??? How is their asking price a "deal buster"?? Something stinks.

Name one thing about the MedCon

Name one thing about the MedCon that has been in good faith...

Funny, Edward was the good Kennedy of my lifetime, and he got thrown out of Harvard for cheating

What is this Kennedy capable of, while still appearing heroic to the public

Disrupt IT

 Whether or not, lo and

 Whether or not, lo and behold, the county does have backup docs for the $2.4M, that MMPI letter, (which appears for them to be some "huge accountability effort") says it was for "pre-construction design building and various consultants for performing work on the feasibility plans."  

What the heck kind of multi-million dollar "feasibility planning" can they possibly defend now, while they simultaneously suddenly say " Oh Whoopsy! Wrong spot! Bad location! And that's after months/years and all kinds of gozungus dough of OURS was already spent months/years ago on thoroughly testing Public Hall ( remember that PD "cliff hanger"? - while Miller was still vying for his Tower City locale?;) and more recently the complete interior and exterior architectural plans and renderings, and first-class air trips and very posh, private meetings; and Power Points to shove the whole thing down our throats. Even a toddler knows that kind of "feasibility" - that one one must have gained a sure seat in the sandbox, and be sitting in it, before one starts peeing in it. 

So for starters, we need to demand our "feasibility planning" money back. MMPI's sudden revelations of "bad spot!" after things had gone so far and expensively, now demonstrates they did a pretty bad job of even that. (That is, "a bad job" if the truly best spot for such a venture for this county had been their goal, not which developer and whatever else would get them the most money.)

And what kind of hokum contracts did our apparently increasingly enriched "leaders" and attorney friends dream up, if Hagan can now seemingly attempt to "threaten" us that MMPI could just walk away - after they've gotten a couple of million for doing apparently nothing (nothing, at least for us, who're providing those millions stuffed in heir pockets.) 

I agree with Roldo (and thank Roldo wholeheartedly for doing all this legwork and reporting the facts to us!) - we need MMPI to finally to walk/get away. But they also need to come clean with what they did for what they've been paid - did for us - and they need to pay us back into our county coffers for what they didn't do.  MMPI, the Commissioners, the lawyers - the whole lot of 'em.

This very privately concocted, now spread with ever-evolving, creative layers of more "concoct," this complete heist of the public has gone on beyond long enough  - all the way from the two-years-ago, 2-commissioner made sales tax hike that still certainly appears to have legally been required to have gone on the ballot, but didn't, as it almost certainly would have been voted down - by us - the heisted, sweat-browed, working taxpayer-uppers.  Even after their two years of shoving this down our throats, I bet that if  this "med mart/convention center" would go on the ballot now - even without the sales tax hike - even more would say NO! The people paying for this now joke, but not getting any of the inside big goodies, don't even want this thing. Some threat (to the majority, not inside few) to have MMPI walk away....

And I wonder how many have even seen those beautiful architectural drawings - the ones that promise lovely large and small meeting rooms for meetings, breakfasts, luncheons, etc. - but with no additional downtown parking, let alone the necessary free or very low cost parking to attract tenants, customers, and even allow Cuyahoga residents who are to pay for the whole thing to just walk through and see it every once in awhile, at no additional cost...And after all this time, I've heard little about any, firmly promised tenants. 

It certainly is time to get our money back and say goodbye to  these greedy, "unwise." And I bet that such an entrepreneurial, private, for-(big)profit medical mart would do far better as a Clinic (or UH or Metro, or consortium) subsidiary, on Clinic land, paid for by Clinic and private business investment - the way it should be.  

Finally, my main point now follows. Doesn't anyone else find it noticeably "odd" that MMPI and the Commissioners and all others involved in ripping off our tax monies and taking food, education and health millions from the lives of economically strapped working people of Cuyahoga for this - have so suddenly, right after the election where the Commissioner structure was voted down, found that their old deal won't work?

What kinds of papers and deals will now be thrown in the trash? What didn't they want to/could not and stay out of court - put in the hands and before the eyes of others (whom I not convinced will be much better than what we've had, with our Cuyahoga millions just sitting there tempting more private deals and skims.)  The concurrence of events of trashing what was so pathetically certain weeks before, with the certain, more exposed change of office, is just too odd.....