Saturday, June 13, 2009

BL Companies lays off 25, Council leadership prefers to pay for "bells'n'whistles"

From the MRJs Mary Ellen Godin:

MERIDEN - Architectural firm BL Cos. is at the fore of planning and permitting activity and as such, among the first to feel the downturn.

Last week, the employee-owned company was forced to lay off 25 workers in its seven offices in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. Thirteen of the affected workers were in the Research Parkway headquarters.


FWIW, BL Companies was the second choice for the building assessment project. BL would charge about $120,000 to do the same job as the likely winner. But the winner of the RFP wants $150,000. One of the people knowledgable on the selection process told me the main difference was that while BL was quite competent, they didn't offer the "bells'n'whistles."

So there you have it. This Council leadership takes direction from staff and, as a result, the taxpayers get shafted for $30,000... while the local economy loses jobs.

I wonder how far $30,000 would go in showing some respect to Mixville? Oh wait...



Tim White

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

goes to show how important town contracts are to local businesses. Also shows that low bid is not always in the towns best interest.

Anonymous said...

"goes to show how important town contracts are to local businesses..."

Good news. It seems there is more bidding for town contracts going on instead of the usual give-it-away to a buddy on the QT activities of the recent past.

It is also interesting to contemplate why the town would hire a firm that is located hundreds of miles away when qualified firms headquarters and licensed to perform engineering in CT bid lower?

On the trash hauler bid there was some checking of legal requirements which turned up legal issues disqualifying the apparent low bidder. Prior to the award it is wondered if anyone checked to verify whether the successful bidder was using engineers with current CT state licenses.

Anonymous said...

The problem with people working at BL is that BL is not a government owned business/service. If BL was government controlled, they would have twice the workers, just in case there would be many more than they need, many would be family or close friends, and they would have gotten 4.4% increases for 3 years and a great benefits package.

Obama, could have solve all the problems of the recession by simply nationalizing every business in the country. We could have been on easy street.

We wouldn't have to worry about contract bids as the government would simply print some more money, we would have turf instead of grass on all school grounds. What a great life it could be.