Quincy Coddington Hall Renovation Project Problems Continue

– News about Quincy MA from Quincy Quarry.

Deck Coddington Hall – and then some. A Quincy Quarry News photo. Click on picture for larger image.

Quincy’s Coddington Hall renovation project continues to hit with problems now including scandal as well as even more suspect spending, not to mention that Quincy Quarry is actively working other likely to soon break stories on this over-budget, late finished and variously otherwise problematic project.

As for scandal, lame duck Attorney General Martha Coakley has both fined and banned a New Hampshire-based construction subcontractor on the Coddington Hall and fire-ravaged old City Hall renovation projects as well as banned this company from working on similar projects in Massachusetts for a year.

Coddington Christmas Tree again dangergous sIdeways – a Quincy Quarry News photo

Further problematic is City Hall’s apparent continued overspending on the already significantly over-budget Coddington Hall renovation project.

A prudent Quincy Quarry reader bought to the Quarry’s attention that the variously problematic Coddington Hall is now extensively festooned with holiday swag.

While none of us wish to be seen as, well, a Grinch around the holidays, 34 holiday wreaths on the front windows of Coddington Hall are more than a bit much – especially as the mayor has trimmed annual spending per student, net of inflation, since he first came into office and so cut school staffing and services offered in recent years while he has conversely increased spending in all other city departments by roughly 18%, again net of inflation.

Assuming a reasonable price of $35 dollars per wreath, total wreath outlays are projected at over a thousand dollars before any consideration of installation expenses, much less the additional cost of holiday candles lights in many of the windows.

Conversely, if the wreaths were donated, such opens up all manner of questions as to the propriety of such absent proper receipt of such a considerable gift to facilitate the mayor’s obsession with doing up Christmas on the taxpayers and certain local businesses’ expense while at the same time not exactly sensitive to Quincy’s increasingly diverse population and of whom at least some have different views about this time of year.

Overtime ghost of Christmases past? A Quincy Quarry News file photo

Quincy Quarry did not bother to reach out to City Hall on the decorating costs as it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that such work done by city workers has a cost to taxpayers as it takes them away from providing basic municipal services – for example, cutting down dangerous trees on city property along the increasingly dangerous streets of Quincy.

City Hall silence notwithstanding, Quincy Quarry was still able to estimate that city workers’ time and city equipment expenses to both put up and eventually take down the wreaths as an additional low four figure expense as well as that this figure is BEFORE any consideration for the likelihood that the usual select city workers were paid overtime as the work could only be done after hours or over the weekend when the parking lot was empty.

Also not included is the possibility that at least half a shift’s time was accorded for less than a full shift’s worth of work.

Holiday beautification notwithstanding, one can only reasonably assume the resources so expended could have instead gone a long way towards brightening the lives of dozens of disadvantaged local children this holiday season.

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