Res 1992-106 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

PROTEST OF COSTS DEEMED NOT REIMBURSEABLE AND OTHER COSTS WITHHELD The City of San Marcos hereby protests the entire amount of the disallowance, $105,909.68, recommended by the TWC staff. The City has fully paid all Hazcorp invoices submitted to TWC for reimbursement. These charges were not known to be ineligible for reimbursement at the time they were incurred. Had city officials been fully advised as to reimbursement eligibility criteria prior to the charges being incurred, arrangements could have been made with Hazcorp to renegotiate its charges, or the city could have exercised its rights to terminate the Hazcorp agreement and negotiated a new contract with another contractor based on the TWC criteria. The disallowance of costs actually incurred in good faith by the City of San Marcos in its remediation efforts therefore amounts to a penalty levied by TWC against the City and its citizens. In spite of the disallowance, the State nevertheless conditions the partial reimbursement on the City'S execution of a contract of Transfer, Assignment, Subrogation and Cooperation, under which the State obtains the City'S rights to recover excessive costs from Hazcorp. The irony here is obvious. The city must assign its right to recover "unreasonable" charges from Hazcorp to TWC at the same time that TWC refuses to reimburse the City for these charges. Even if the City were to retain these rights, the City'S accounting, engineering, and legal staffs are simply not equipped to recover amounts paid to Hazcorp on the basis of the State's review of these amounts months after they were paid, and on the basis of review criteria which were not clearly defined when the amounts were paid. The only equitable approach in these circumstances is for the City to collect full reimbursement of the costs it has paid in good faith, and in exchange to transfer, assign and subrogate any rights it may have against its contractor to the Water Commission for enforcement by the Commission's staff. This was the procedure followed for the City'S first reimbursement application dated February 25, 1991. The City asks that this procedure be followed again.