Credit Portland for positive change

Change is inevitable.
Whether it ends up being positive or negative depends greatly on how it is handled.
That’s true of life in general. It’s also true of construction projects.
Change orders seem to be a way of life when it comes to work contracted by government units.
After bidding is complete and construction is already underway, a company will come with a request for more funding for this change or that.
In some cases, those changes, and the extra money that accompanies them, are both legitimate and necessary. Maybe something was added to the job or a detail in the specifications for the work turned out to be incorrect.
But that’s not always the case. Sometimes the changes are the result of errors made by the contractor or engineer.
And while those are unfortunate, they also should not be the taxpayers’ problem.
All too often change orders are approved with just a passing glance. And with them, more money is spent.
Portland Board of Works deserves credit for bucking that trend.
When Mayor Randy Geesman, city councilman Bill Gibson and fellow board member Jerry Leonhard received two change orders in December totaling nearly $130,000 for the Indiana 26 (Water Street) construction project that had been completed a month earlier, they balked. They questioned why the city was being asked to pay more for engineering errors it had nothing to do with. And they did the same a month later when another change order came in bringing the total requested to almost $141,000.
The 30-day window the city had to pay those requests came and went, Portland argued its case and, last week, it was presented with some “recalculations.”
Instead of the nearly $140,904 that had been originally requested, the city was instead asked to pay less than $7,000 for overages on the project.
Because the board stood up for the city rather than simply rolling over and paying for the change orders, Portland gets to keep an extra $134,000 in its coffers. That’s money that can be used to fix roads, improve sewers, repair water lines, help mitigate flooding problems, upgrade parks or any of a long list of other projects that could help the city.
Legitimate change orders should be paid. But all change orders should get their due scrutiny before that happens.
Portland’s city officials felt something was amiss, and they did something about it.
That’s a positive change. — R.C.