Author: Randy Corman

Last night Renton City Council received their 56th change order for the Phase 4 Rainier Avenue improvement project.  This change order brings the new anticipated cost up another $390,000, 29% higher than originally budgeted.  And the project is only nearing the “pavement complete” stage.  Landscaping, signage, and other finishing is still ahead and will undoubtedly bring more changes.  (Just last month Council approved a change order hiking the project cost by $3.4 million.)

The contractor submitted the latest $390K change order in response to a section of the original street being about eight inches higher than shown in the engineering drawings, necessitating more material removal and rebuilding of the compact gravel layer before pavement resurfacing could occur.   While this specific change order may be reasonable, the total number and cost of change orders on this project should merit some concern by council, and ideally should lead to detailed after-action reviews.  Change orders can be caused by many things including schedule delays, contract language, engineering issues, incomplete requirements definition, permitting changes, scope creep, and other issues.

Two-to-three times the number of changes than in previous phase:

For comparison, the Rainier Avenue Phase 3 project was a very similar size and scope to this project, providing the same bus access lanes, upgraded signals and lighting, center median, wider sidewalks, updated water and sewer, joint use utility trench, upgraded signals and new landscape– on a more southerly stretch of Rainier Avenue.  But that Phase 3 project ran ahead of schedule and resulted in only 20 change orders at the “pavement  complete” stage, just 35% the number of changes seen in Phase 4 to date .  The Phase 3 project reached 36 change orders by its conclusion, picking up 16 relatively-minor changes as all the landscaping, signage, Metro Bus provisions, and art installations, and final reconciliation were completed. But even the final number was only 2/3 of the 56 change orders on Phase 4 to date– and again, the phase 4 project has a long ways to go.

You can find the list of change orders from Phase 4 here.  You can find the complete list of change order from Phase 3 here.

Phase 4 is at least 154 work days behind (about 7-8 months), and motorists have endured  continuous lane closures and traffic jams.

Phase 3 finished three months early, and all lanes remained open during most of construction.  The Renton Reporter announced the early opening in December 2013 as shown below.

There are only four and a half months until the Renton Farmers Market opens, and just five months before international visitors fill local hotels for the FIFA World Cup.  But our 26-year-old downtown Piazza, which will host the Market and soccer celebrations events, currently looks more like a construction zone than a park.

Crews will be scrambling during the next 18 weeks in what could be consider a self-inflicted emergency, since the Piazza was a nice park before it was torn up last summer.  As one of Renton’s stakeholders who helped plan and build the Piazza in 2000, I would not have chosen to rip so much of it out.  The trees and other plantings were maturing to the original landscape architect’s plans. The shade from the trees, along with the park’s two (now eliminated) water-features, provided much-needed respite from summer heat.

As can be seen in today’s photos, some of the trees are remaining, but many have been removed.

This city flyer above, released just today, urges “Get Ready Renton Businesses!”  Our businesses could make the same request of the city. “Get our parks ready Renton… and while you are at it, complete the delayed work on Rainier Avenue so visitors can get to the soccer games”

My wife and I saw the Northern Lights early this morning from our home in North Renton Highlands.  We got this view at about 5:50 AM, two hours before sunrise. These iphone photos make the colors more prominent than they appeared to our unassisted eyes, but the colors were visible and enjoyable without the phone.

Demolition began today on 500 Park Avenue North, the smaller of the two buildings at Garden Plaza as anticipated in my blog entry of December 19.  Thanks to Maggie Howard for sending me these photos.

Removal of this dangerous, blighted building will be cause for celebration.  It’s sad that the once-desirable office building was able to sink to this level of deterioration during the past three years.

When writing my previous blog entry about the pending demolition of 500 Park Avenue North in Renton, I ran a google image search for the property and noticed that the photos that came up were mostly the building in its current sad state of decay.  After demolition, this building and the nearby 535 Garden Avenue North building will ideally be remembered the impressive way they looked for the first 30-50 years during Boeing use, not the dystopian way they looked during the last three years under ION Renton ownership.  To help us remember them in a positive way, I captured some views from Google Maps in the years before the recent neglect set in, and I’m posting them here for posterity.

For several months distraught residents and visitors of “The Reserve at Renton” senior living apartments have been attending Renton City Council Meetings and complaining about towing.  Many have testified that they or someone they know had their car towed to Kent unfairly, and they say they were billed as much as eight hundred dollars to reclaim their car.

I posted two blog entries about this controversy in September that you can find here and here.

On my first post an anonymous commenter wrote “I’d be curious if the towing company is licensed to do business in Renton”.  I assumed the company probably had a Renton license, as it seemed unlikely that a company that was being discussed so publicly at Council meetings would not be checked by anyone at the city as to whether they had a Renton business license. But I told the commenter I would look into it.

I only recently followed up on this comment, and the answer surprised me.

The city publishes an 81 page list of active Renton business licenses, and Lynn’s Towing is not on it.  There are nineteen other tow companies on the list, including many in Renton and some in Seattle, Issaquah, Burien, and elsewhere.  There are also many other types of businesses with headquarters on Central Ave in Kent, near Lynn’s towing address of record.  But Lynn’s Towing does not appear to be on the list.  Readers can check the list for themselves here.

Note that I’m only commenting on whether Lynn’s Towing appears to be on the published list of Renton business licenses.  Towing companies also need Federal DOT and State Business License, and I think that they meet those requirements; State license records show them with a current license.  I tried to access the company’s website today to find their posted license information, and unfortunately the site appeared to be down both times that I checked it.

I’m not an attorney, so I can not say whether a lack of a city license would have any bearing on the legality of the towing actions that were discussed at the Renton City Council meetings.  Towing procedures are covered primarily under state law (and at this time I assume the business has the necessary state licenses). City business licensing concerns would primarily be an issue between the city and the business, and often involve payment of taxes to the correct jurisdiction.

Anyone in Renton whose car gets towed involuntarily could ask for  proof that the towing company is licensed to do business in our city.  A business found to be ignoring licensing rules has no credibility in making judgements about who is lawfully following parking rules.

Howard Hanson Dam is central to preventing Green River flooding, and it’s been in the news in the past few days.  Seventeen years ago the dam needed major updates in order to store it’s full design capacity of water. Public officials from potential flood areas including Renton participated in helping the Army Corps of engineers acquire the necessary funding to make permanent repairs and install temporary levee extensions (walls of sandbags on top of existing levees) in case we experienced a bad flood while completing the repairs.

The concern was not with the dam itself, but rather the soil near the dam.  The dam is located in a valley that was narrowed by a landslide 10,000 years ago.   This ancient landslide was beginning to seep water, and the Army Corps of engineers ultimately injected concrete into this landslide zone to stop the water from forming streams that ultimately could have grown into a washout.  The concerns subsided in spring of 2010 as repairs were completed.

This blog post from 2009 documents a visit by public officials to this site where we got a personal view of the problem near the dam.  Councilmember Terri Briere and I attended and represented Renton.

To see all the posts I’ve published concerning Howard Hanson Dam, please click here.

My home as at the corner of NE 23rd Street and Harrington Place NE, which gave me both a power outage and a front-row seat to the power restoration during the last 24 hours.  We were one of the estimated 100,000 PSE customers without power at the end of last night’s storm.

A large seemingly-dead cedar tree fell across NE 23rd street, snapping the high-voltage power lines and yanking a utility pole out of alignment.  My daughter-in-law who lives in a home nearby and was still awake at 2:00 AM heard the crash and saw the sparks on the street as the wires grounded and shorted out.  Thankfully no one appeared to have been injured.

I’ve been told Renton Firefighters arrived quickly and inspected the area, ensuring no one was underneath the tree and that there was no lingering fire danger.  They closed the road with tape, and city road crews followed up with additional signage.

Early this afternoon Puget Sound Energy workers and a tree service arrived in force, and removed the tree and restored the wires in about two hours of work.  We and 56 other households were of course all happy to get power restored. Residents along NE 23rd street were also happy to have the intimidating wires picked up so they could get out of their driveways.

Here are some photos from the restoration:

In my previous entry on December 9th, I shared the concern that NOAA was predicting a five-foot increase in the water level in the Cedar River in Renton over the next few days (December 9th-12).  Their predictions proved fairly accurate, and our city went through an anxious and restless few days as water levels in the river ultimately rose to the bottoms of some of our downtown bridges before finally subsiding.

As an atmospheric river deluged Western Washington and the Cascade foothills, city crews and residents worked to protect our city and others as best they could while Army Corps and Seattle engineers captured as much water as they could in reservoirs on the Cedar River, Green River, Skagit River, and elsewhere.

Thankfully, the rain slowed about when NOAA had predicted, right when Cedar River’s Chester Morse reservoir was topped out at about 10 percent above it’s normal high water mark– a point where no more water could have been sequestered.

During these events many Renton residents (me included) had taken to Facebook and other social media to share real-time information and photos.  With this blog entry, I’m bringing this blog up-to-date on these posts.

Authorities are only beginning to assess the damage from this flooding, and I’m sure there has been hardship and property damage that we are not yet aware of.  There have been reports on social media that some people in Renton were displaced from their homes at the Riviera Apartments and likely elsewhere.  My sincere sympathies are with everyone who has been impacted, and I encourage everyone to report any damage to the city for possible Federal and State assistance.

Even with the new rain we are experiencing, NOAA shows the Cedar River might only touch the “minor” flood stage, about four or five feet lower than last week’s record flood stage.

However, today a new threat to Renton and Tukwila arose when a Green River levee failed near Southcenter mall, causing an emergency evacuation of parts of the valley.

Below the cut I’ve included my Facebook posts from the past week, along with photos of the high water in the Cedar River that crested last Thursday and Friday.

Continue reading →

One key lesson every good project manager learns early in their career: if you want a project to come in on budget, it must come in on schedule.  Delays create extra labor costs, out-of-sequence work, tool and equipment shortages, evolving requirements, and other consequences that can dramatically increase the costs.

I previously described the eight months of delays and $4,000,000 cost increase on this project in a blog post in March: “Motorists and businesses losing patience with delayed Rainier Avenue project, originally scheduled to finish this week”

Monday we learned that these delays have cost Renton another $3,400,000. The complete ten-page spending bill can be found here.

The following excerpt from one of the engineering contractors on this project shows how initial delays cascade into further delays, and new costs rapidly accumulate as requirements and processes shift over time (emphasis added).

“All documentation was developed by our team and subsequently approved by the City and its legal review team expeditiously following Notice to Proceed. Unfortunately, we were unable to proceed with presenting and securing these property rights due to evolving pre-certification review complications between WSDOT and City management lasting approximately seven to eight months. That said, we’ve been notified recently that these oversight issues are resolved and that our team will shortly be given approval to make offers.

The complicating factors at this point, and the purpose of this contract amendment request, is that all valuations are now over six months old, as are the project’s title reports, and WSDOT recently has undergone extensive updates to its Right of Way Manual in the last 60 days resulting in a total redrafting of all of the City’s temporary construction easement documents. Also notable: in an unprecedented compliance order for all local public agencies, WSDOT is now requiring pre-approval on all Administrative Settlement Justifications on a parcel-by-parcel basis for negotiations settlements $1 or more above Fair Market Value. It is difficult to estimate how much more effort this WSDOT review will cost, but we will be diligent to secure these approvals as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Regarding our increased fee request, the revisions to all (26) Appraisal Waivers and redrafting of all of the offer packages are effectively a restart of most of our efforts.” 

Keeping on schedule starts at the top.  Renton’s previous Public Works director brought in earlier phases of Rainier Avenue improvement on time and on budget, with very few lane closures.  He personally inspected the construction sites daily, and kept the project moving as planned.  When anything got off schedule, those of us in elected office would help him get it back on schedule.  Renton’s current Public Works director often phones into meetings from his home on Bainbridge Island, and has never lived in King County.  Lengthy lane closures and delays have been the norm on this project, and it feels like little has been done to protect the schedule or cost to taxpayers.

Residents should make it clear to Renton leadership that no more delays and no more tax money will be tolerated for this project– it’s way past time to get it done.

During the 28 years I was on Renton City Council, we gave members of the public who attended our meetings at least five minutes to speak.  If someone was giving complex testimony and needed more than five minutes, we would almost always grant it.  I always felt that anything less than five minutes was too rushed, and particularly difficult and unfair to those who speak English as a second language.  Occasionally over the years various members suggested shortening it, and I always pushed back, insisting on maintaining at least five minutes.

I retired from Council in December 2021, and in the following year the standard was changed to three minutes.  This change has resulted in too much hurried testimony, missed opportunities to solve problems early, and complaints from residents who often feel they are not being heard.  Rushed testimony doesn’t just miss key points– it also can come off as more hostile than intended, as hurried speakers often side-step pleasantries, don’t have adequate time to gauge how their comments are affecting their listeners, and sometimes may not feel they can slow down to breathe.

I personally recommend that Renton Council restore the five minute testimony.  Current Renton Council meetings average about 45 minutes, and this change would only make them 5-10 minutes longer.  Since Councilmembers are paid about $500 per week for their service, it seems fair that they give members of the public two more minutes each to speak on issues of concern to them.  (It’s typical to have between 2-5 speakers, and five speakers talking for two extra minutes would only add ten minutes).

The Council has also become shy about discussing the issues brought up by the residents, and I’ve covered that concern in a previous blog entry here.  The Council could add another five to ten minutes of interactive problem-solving with residents who come to speak, and still keep their average meetings to about an hour.

Below is a screenshot of the top of the agenda from my last Council Meeting in 2021, and the last paragraph shows that audience members still had five minutes each to speak to council, and even longer if we offered an exception (which we frequently did).

Below that is a chart showing the typical council meeting length.

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) just announced the I-405 Renton to Bellevue widening project has fallen a year and a half behind schedule.  We’re just being told now, a few weeks before the “2025 expected completion” date that WSDOT had been sharing on their website for years.

Perhaps the worst part of the planned delay is that it will now stretch through TWO more summers, with presumably the same random full-freeway closures that we’ve endured the past few summers.  These freeway closures have created unexpected traffic jams throughout Renton and the eastside that make it very challenging to create and keep weekend travel plans.  The closures and jam-ups also make it difficult for residents to access emergency rooms and pharmacies when they need to.

Our State Department of Transportation needs to crack down on the contractor’s use of full freeway closures as part of their discussions with the contractor about the new timeline.  Twenty years ago such full closures were virtually unheard of;  meticulous planning would enable freeways to be worked on a lane at a time.  But this past summer it felt like the freeway contractors were throwing random full-closures of a north or south direction at us every other weekend– and the unofficial detour routes always went through our neighborhoods, keeping us virtually stuck at home.

Below is a screenshot of the Washington State Department of Transportation blog entry announcing the delay.