By James Jensen
At the City Council Meeting on 9/8/25 the first “shovel ready” project in our city infrastructure work since the huge increase in bills (received mine today) to citizens was put up for a vote. But the elephant in the room was that since July it had gone from 4.5 Million dollars to over 7 Million dollars. If that isn’t enough the Council and Citizens were alerted to this barely a business day ahead of the council vote, and 3 more days until the Loan for the project would be applied for with the OCWD and a week more before the bid would expire. This delay in transparency put undo pressure on the Council to try and understand and swallow such an enormous cost explosion. Two reasons for this come to mind… Incompetence in the Department and not keeping the council and city informed as things were obviously getting out of hand in the last month is one. The other is that giving us no time and threatening us with potentially losing the loan (and having to pay higher interest) or losing the bid (and having to put it out and potentially pay more) would force the city council to go along with this horrible addition to the projected cost.
Public Works Director Iris Lee in speaking to the City Council regarding the OCWD who is going to loan us the money for the Lampson Well project said, and I quote “ They have looked at our bids and do feel it is appropriate. So I wanted to put that out there that they did do a Peer Review for us.” Councilperson Patty Senecal immediately asked, “ Can we get the peer review?” Ms. Lee responded, “There was nothing written, it was a virtual chat with them and it was basically a peer to peer review as a courtesy and not something that was documented on paper.”
This is a gross misuse of the phrase “peer review” and after seeing Ms. Lee’s resume on the big screen on our Aug 11th meeting she should know better than to toss around phrases like that if they aren’t true. “Peer Review” is a phrase that gives credence to research and scholarly papers and is one of the “gold standards” of science. It’s a process where scientists (“peers”) evaluate the quality of other scientists’ work. By doing this, they aim to ensure the work is rigorous, coherent, uses past research and adds to what we already know. We’ve all heard this on the “news’ as an example “In a peer review study published by the New England Journal of Medicine” and following that is the finding… that phrase says to the listener… Pay attention: This isn’t one person’s opinion but it has been scrutinized by others. It comes with a LOT of WEIGHT!
Whether somebody at the OCWD said to Ms. Lee that our loan amount and or contractor and budget seemed okay to them in a “chat” as she claims that is a hundred miles from something that should be referred to as “peer reviewed” and she offered that up in an extra comment to try and convince the council she was being appropriate with this added expense and the company chosen. This is either incompetence again or intentionally misleading the City Council.
I’m tired of being told how smart, accomplished and valuable our Director Of Public Works is and then see none of that in practical application. This took place without transparency and was overseen by Public Works, the City Manager, and the City Attorney in the last month and sprung on the council and citizens well past the 2 minute warning, the clock running down, and no time outs.
All of them need to be held responsible.
To that the only thing I’ve witnessed them do on time is raise our water/sewer rates as one month to the day after they were passed I received my new substantially higher bill in the mail. And I’m sure the next “adjustment” will be on time come January.
Another twist to the story … on Aug 11th one of the residents who spoke asked why not get a second opinion before committing to a loan which could result in 100 million dollars to repay when all is said and done. Our overlords from the City Council said we don’t need one because the opinion of our paid expert in the Public Works will suffice as the final word. This months meeting we heard that the water heater for the pool at McGaugh needs replacing and the cost would be $80k. That did justify a “second opinion” and even a third one and looks like we will be saving money. Am I the only person scratching their head and wondering why an 80 thousand dollar expense deserves a second opinion but 100 million doesn’t?
That’s like getting a second opinion for a hangnail but not for brain surgery.
James Jensen is a Seal Beach resident and homeowner.
