3/10/07 Legislators grill administrator on land deal

( As published by Cortland Standard, Corey Preston reporting)

Legislators peppered Cortland County Administrator Scott Schrader with questions Friday regarding his authority to seek properties and put together a preliminary plan for a new public health facility on south Main Street.
Schrader maintained that he was simply doing his job.
Although Schrader was officially addressing the Legislature’s special committee, which is looking closely at various aspects of the canceled land deal, a handful of legislators not on the committee were in attendance — and they produced much of the questioning.
“That’s the bottom line, I don’t think he had the authority to go ahead with it,” said Legislator Kay Breed (R-Cortlandville).
Much of the questioning from Breed, Newell Willcox (R-Homer) and Tom Williams (R-Homer) revolved around Schrader’s use of Barton and Loguidice, whom the county retains for engineering services, for the project.
Barton & Loguidice first became involved in the project in last March, Schrader said, when the firm helped him develop building specifications for the county’s needs for a public health facility, a new motor vehicles office and a new county jail.
The firm then again provided services beginning in September, when the south Main Street plan began to take shape, and through December, when the engineering firm’s preliminary renderings of the building were made public, Schrader said.
Williams and Breed pressed Schrader on the propriety of using Barton & Loguidice for a capital project, saying that the county’s contract with the firm is geared primarily toward highway projects.
“The contract specifically states highway projects, and when you look at the scope of services, nowhere does it talk about anything besides the highway department,” Breed said after the meeting.
Schrader countered by pointing to calls for “construction engineering” and “building and highway facility engineering” in the scope of services.
“A project like this is precisely why we have a contract with them,” Schrader said.
Breed also questioned the cost of the engineering services — approximately $11,000 — and noted that Schrader is prohibited from moving more than $10,000 within the county’s budget without legislative approval.
Schrader, however, said that $8,500 of the funding had come from a discretionary professional services account, which is meant for services such as engineering services, and that he’d only moved about $3,000 to cover the costs.
Meanwhile Willcox continued to stress that the Buildings and Grounds Committee, of which he’s a member, did not have enough oversight of the project.
Committee Vice-chairman Dan Tagliente (D-7th Ward) was involved in the project from the beginning, Willcox noted, but the rest of the committee was not informed of initial interest in the Moose Lodge property in February 2006.
“Absolutely I feel like I was left out of this process,” Willcox said.
The initial dealings with the Moose Lodge were not reported to Buildings and Grounds, Schrader said, because it was not deemed a viable option considering limited available space.
Only after Schrader asked Cinquanti Real Estate to look at acquiring properties surrounding the Moose Lodge did it become a viable project, he said.
Although Schrader was put on the defensive for much of the meeting, some legislators did come to his defense.
Tagliente said that, throughout the process, Schrader had insisted on taking things slowly to be sure they were done properly, while Legislator John Steger (R-Preble and Scott) said after the meeting that Schrader was doing the job he was hired to do.
“A budget of this magnitude cannot be financially administered efficiently without daily supervision, and legislators are only part time, so that’s why we hired an administrator,” Steger said. “Someone has to be on top of all the projects, someone has to be putting all the leg work into it.”