This is really scary. Please read the comments under this post. No one is holding the city administration accountable. No one. LNP gives them a total pass and has for years.
There will be more tomorrow.
*
IT NEVER HURTS…
Remember the above (click here for the original)? Well Tony Dastra followed up with Hopkins to find out how the city resolved this mess of their own making. I got a phone call that I had to take during the three hour meeting, but I came in at the end of this and I will try to publish a transcript.
Tony asked Hopkins if they took back the warehouse by eminent domain. Hopkins said, “no.” He then asked if it had gone to court. Hopkins said, “no.” Then Tony asked Hopkins how much the city paid Wacker to get out of the lease. Hopkins said he couldn’t remember (lol!). And Tony finished up with (LNP reporters please take note) that he would like to know and if Hopkins could please look it up and let him know at the next meeting. Good job, Tony! And if he doesn’t tell the public I will put in a Right-to-Know request. And Wacker is doing well! Click here for the March LNP story, “Wacker’s Roadhouse opens in Willow Street; new taproom for historic Lancaster brewery.” Will they give Lancaster residents a free beer? It never hurts to ask!
***
TEST #3
I got your attention now, didn’t I? Yes, test #3 involves beer and the Wacker Brewing Company! Will there be a free beer for everyone? Stay tuned…
***
TEST #2
Now this is not really a test but it is a comment. Hopkins told city council on Monday that in addition to the $1,200,000 they need for construction of the fire stations that they also need a “contingency fund” for the East King Street fire station. Why? Hopkins said there have been 5 or 6 fire stations built at that location and (gasp and cue the creepy music) no one knows what is below the station! I think Hopkins’ calculator might be below the station – but seriously, five or six? That is extremely doubtful and it’s probably more like three. And you mean there are no records or blueprints from the previous constructions? Maybe they should check out the Historical Society. They can x-ray every inch of a human body but they don’t know what is under the East King Street fire station? It is simply absurd! How does this man keep his job?
***
TEST #1
At Monday’s city council committee meeting, Tony Dastra asked one of the candidates for the Planning Commission, “How much does a dollar cost?”
Let’s find out if Patrick Hopkins knows!
So once again, Hopkins showed the above slide and said the city needs $1.3 million dollars more for the construction of the two fire stations – the one on West King and the one on East King Street. Now Hopkins said the city has a note – otherwise known as a loan – taken in 2019 for $9,040,000, The rate on the loan is 2.82% interest for the first ten years and then a variable rate for the next ten years with a cap of 5%. Now someone told Hopkins that they can now get a loan with a rate of $2.63% interest for the first ten years and with the same variable rate for the next ten years again with a cap of 5%.
Now, get your calculators and let me know if this will save $1.3 million dollars and how could they possibly know the ultimate savings/cost with a variable rate for ten years?
****
4-8- UPDATE
Coming later today: Three tests to see if city Business Administrator Patrick Hopkins has a clue and can do basic math! Get your pencils and erasers ready. I was going to lead into this with a “cute” story about my taking economics in college and how it caused such a panic that I almost didn’t recover. But LNP’s editorial today dampened all my joy (more on that later) and I’m going straight to the testing and I plan to end up with Brittany Porreca and how she can work as an administrative assistant if she is permanently and totally disabled! Oh, and where is LNP?
*
The below post on the “Agape Care, Home Care” Facebook page came down fast and is no longer there. I am doing some research this afternoon. Please check back tomorrow.
*
*** BREAKING NEWS ***
WHY DIDN’T THE POLICE
PUT HER ON DESK DUTY?
From the “Agape Care, Home Care” Facebook page.
City council just voted to give Brittany Porreca a disability retirement pension because she had a “permanent and total disability” while working for the Lancaster City Police Department (click here).
Why didn’t the police put her on desk duty? How can she be employed?
Please check back later today for this developing story.
The second version of my comment is the more detailed of the two, you can feel free to delete the first. Thanks
Thank you so much. I will leave both!
January 1 2018, Lancaster City leases the building to Wacker
about one year later, the City says, ” OH SNAP, we need that building !”
City finds out the lease has a no termination clause.
No one on Council asks “how didn’t we know we’d need it ?”, nor “who wrote such a terrible lease ?”
June 2019 – Council votes authorization to use eminent domain to terminate the lease.
When asked about a follow up, Patrick Hopkins claims to hardly be able to remember the issue, then recalls “Oh right” says Hopkins, “this was all settled before the bids went out and we demolished the building”. Amanda Bakay says “Right, we took care of this at the beginning of 2020”. . And everyone laughs and rolls their eyes at Tony Dastra and his silly questions.
Here’s the problem(s)
The bids for the fire station were first OPENED in August 2019.
As of a September 26 newspaper article
The city and Wacker are negotiating Wacker’s compensation, and the company has agreed to vacate the building within two weeks, city solicitor Barry Handwerger said.
Wacker Brewing NEVER appears in the City Council minutes or agendas again.
I’m not sure what Bakay “took care of”, since the settlement was never acted on by City Council. At least not in public and there’s no record of any executive session. And Barkay wasn’t even in office until 2020 – months after Hopkins claimed date of resolution.
The vacating of the building and its demolition didn’t bring an end to the issue according the the solicitor, and if there was a settlement as Hopkins claims, when did Council act on it ?
Patrick Hopkins “struggling” to remember an issue from a year ago where the tenant was seeking a $495,000 settlement, on a construction site that needed to be bid twice and is millions of dollars over budget, is either a sign of of lacking in either competency or honesty.
Seven City Council members charged with protecting the interests of the community and they all remain silent . It takes some private citizen to ask the most basic, simple and obvious questions. It is really shameful.
Way to go Tony!
Regarding Wacker, we should be clear about what happened there.
The City wrote a lease to let Wacker in on January 2018
A little over a year later they realize, “opps, our bad, we actually need that building”
But they inconceivably wrote the lease with no termination clause.
How is that level of incompetence tolerated ? Where are the questions from City Council asking who screwed up no-knowing and who screwed up the lease ?
Beyond that, Council approved through an administrative bill the termination of the lease by eminent domain. If eminent domain was used, that would have had to come back to Council. If it was not used, the settlement as an unbudgeted expenditure should have come back to Council. And just for the sheer sake of a hint of transparency, there should have been some sort of public follow-up explaining the disposition of the building. Thank goodness for Tony Dastra asking the basic questions that not one other Council person has the competency or courage to ask.
Is Wacker complaining though? If Wacker is the victim, and they’re not complaining, I guess I’m not sure what the issue is?
How about the City taxpayers who have to pay for this easily foreseeable blunder ? Again.
The mayors’ chief of staff is a socialist, in socialism everyone has to “pay their fair share.” It’s the way it is.
He looks like he was at the insurrection!
No one cares about wacker. The issue is the city screw ups that cost inordinate amounts of money at the expense of every single person who lives here.
They’re not complaining cuz WE paid them a $hitload, Mr. Whacker.
http://home.pbe.org/news-and-projects-story/2019-9-4_projects_city-of-lancaster-opens-bids-for-15-million-in-new-fire-station-construction
The original bid came in at $15,000,000 then was rebid.
It would be interesting to compare the bid spec and bid results to see if things such as demolition and “contingency” were removed in the second iteration.
In any case, they knew when they awarded the bid that the stations were going to cost between 14-15 million. So the surprise and the newfound costs are bunk.
Good job Tony! Hopkins knows how much they paid. He doesn’t remember because it’s an embarrassing number.
So Wacker was paying the equivalent of $11,300 per year for a property which would normally cost $90-130,000.00 per year?
https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/wacker-brewings-lease-on-a-storage-building-is-a-hitch-for-citys-fire-station-plans/article_c8a520c6-871a-11e9-8283-d7bab616ae08.html
Did someone get free beers out of that deal?
I think your comment and my post crossed. I think Wacker should give everyone a free beer! 🙂
whoops
Maybe the city thought they’d rather have a business to go in there and spruce up the area compared to the rundown dilapidated abandoned crackhouse that it once was before Wacker renovated. I remember being scared to cut down the alley when the cable company was up the street on Orange.
I see two scenarios: either Hopkins is extremely incompetent and good hearted, or he is a nefarious agent provocateur who wants to bankrupt the city and taxpayers for his private financier buddies.
For pity sake!! Drill a hole and stick a camera down it. He keeps his job cause he knows where the skeletons are and why they are there.
He also spends a good amount of time making public posts on Facebook with the intent of stroking sorace and smith wade els ego. He knows whose good graces his fate lies in. I think he got his start as a Democratic Party boy initially appointed by Janice stork. He is definitely more a political operative than a professional business administrator/cpa.
The power company I worked for would have a Private Detective following me taking pictures. If I so much as picked my newspaper up from the driveway my benefits would have been pulled !!! That’s for real !!!
I was just thinking of the time a PI brought surveillance film to a doctor I knew. It was of a patient on full disability unloading a moving truck and scrambling around on a roof top.
When the patient came in for his check up, the doctor told him that he was healthy enough to return to work.
I’ve always been under the impression that you cannot work if you are declared to be 100 percent disabled.
Albert John Musser Jr., 68, was charged with assault, terroristic threats and a concealed firearm violation after pulling the handgun on a man and woman in the 1000 block of Elbow Road on April 6, threatening to shoot the man, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
This guy deserves life in jail. Loaded weapon and no license to carry .
Interesting!
I’m of the opinion that an officer being injured to the point of total disability while on duty is news for the community in regards to why that happened and if there are controls needed to prevent something similar. But I feel gross looking at her picture plastered on here with her new workplace. I think her future life isn’t any of our business.
Although maybe that has more to do with the annoying practice of companies making these asinine posts with their employees pictures trying to tie our identities to work and being unable to have a personal life.
Agreed.
Gross? Really? Okay well, I feel sick to stomach too. Upon seeing the fraud she’s committed upon the citizens of this county. Totally disabled is when you can’t work at all.
She is laughing all the way to the bank.