Sunday, January 23, 2011

On Joe Killian's comment

"No one is asserting that Williams got "paid off" after the meeting with Alston.

His company had already been paid the money that they'd been paid months earlier.

The meeting was to determine whether they would be paid any more,
would do any more work and/or would be able to finish the project to the county's satisfaction.

So Mr. Williams has only been paid for finished product
that was correctly completed?

The county is now saying they approved the work they paid for
but without it having been finished
and with the bugs in the stuff that they do have it might not be salvageable.

On what has already been paid for,
or what has not been paid for?

It might be correct to say (as commentary) that Alston's meeting could have had the effect
of making the county attorney and SI director decide to give him more time
and put the "walk away" deal on the table
rather than going to court to recoup some or all of the money paid to that point.

Was what was paid for sub par?

Was the initial work evaluated before the next work was approved and initiated?

Alston has said he intended the meeting to forestall that possibility
as he didn't see the point in the county going through that
if it could be resolved in another way.

What is Skip Alston's view of what occured at the meeting?

But he demonstrably didn't influence the actual, initial payout
-- at least according to all the principles in the negotiation and the aftermath."

Joe Killian



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1 comment:

Joe Killian said...

Sorry to have not gotten to the questions yesterday - it was a hectic day.

So Mr. Williams has only been paid for finished product that was correctly completed?

That's really a question for Barbara Weaver. She said to me in an interview that the design portion -- about $32,000 of the whole two phase project -- was completed to their satisfaction and paid for.

I couldn't say how much of the CMS -- the second part -- was finished. It is certainly true that they paid for some of it. The analogy that's come up in conversation with Weaver and Williams is that Williams essentially built a car. He finished and was paid for the body of the vehicle but didn't finish building the engine. He says this is because the budget ran out due to their having asked him to do work outside the scope of what he'd agreed to do. They say he bit off more than he could chew.


On what has already been paid for,
or what has not been paid for?


Their story is that throughout the project there were bugs and errors they asked Williams to address, on things they'd paid for and things they hadn't yet because they hadn't reached that point. The documentation seems to back them up on that. Williams says had he been allowed to finish he would have worked out any of the bugs to their satisfaction. They say they had to cut bait because he wasn't delivering on what he promised them in the second phase.

Was what was paid for sub par?

Was the initial work evaluated before the next work was approved and initiated?


No one characterized to me the work in the first phase as sub par. They were dissatisfied with the second phase and again, how much of that they considered sub par and why that was (shoddy work or just not being allowed to finish) is one of the things at issue. They did evaluate and approve the first phase before beginning the second, according to interviews and documents.

What is Skip Alston's view of what occurred at the meeting?

Chairman Alston's view, as expressed to me, was that he was trying to broker an agreement between a contractor and the county before their differences led them to court. He says he set up the meeting and attended it but did not play a role in the actual negotiations.

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