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Payment problems lay at feet of former councils

Letters to the Editor

Those of you who follow our posts on the Voices of Wimberley facebook site regarding the sewer issue know full well of my opinion regarding Capital Excavation (doing the collection construction) and especially Joe Mayfield, who is the main man over the work being done. Truly a blessing we ended up with this company and especially Joe, whom I have spent quite a bit of time with last week walking and analyzing the entire collection system, service connections, etc.. He has been fantastic with his time, honesty and knowledge on this side of this project.

Unfortunately, the city was notified on Friday, August 3rd by CapEx that if they do not receive payment for services rendered by Monday, August 6th, they are going to pull their crew off the job until they do! To date, CapEx has received no payments from the invoices they have submitted!!

Now before you go and start bashing our current mayor and council for being incompetent and letting this happen, you need to know exactly “how” this happened.

When the contracts were awarded by the previous mayor and council to Black Castle and to CapEx, the city had processes that they were required to go through prior to having contractors actually begin onsite work.

They had to have pre-construction meetings (like the one where Councilperson Barchfeld was not allowed to attend) as well as other defined steps. One critical step being to issue a “Notice to Proceed” which is the final go for the contractor. When this “Notice to Proceed” is issued, TWDB (Texas Water Development Board - the keeper of the funds) must also be notified this notice has been issued.

Well, no one notified the TWDB of this which the mayor found out recently in her meetings with them. Because this notice wasn’t submitted, TWDB has not released funds necessary to pay CapEx. They will at some time but, to date, they haven’t so far!

So be prepared for CapEx to “pause” their work until this problem gets worked out. Also, be prepared for the council/mayor opposition to lay this at the feet of the current majority and insist this project was “shovel ready, fully vetted” until the elections last May.

These are precisely the type problems many foresaw as the city rushed through these contracts and poo poo’d the idea they were being cavalier in their attitude about how things were getting done and all was going to just fall into place. The words they used when challenged was that they were “comfortable” with their decisions and how things were going.

And this is precisely why the last election centered around electing citizens who could properly analyze and manage this project which previous elected officials rammed through while ignoring pleas to get all aspects in order.

Thank God the majority of voting citizens agreed with this.

Tom Keyser

Wimberley View

P.O. Box 49
Wimberley, TX 78676
Phone: 512-847-2202
Fax: 512-847-9054