Wonderful! The contractors, reading the implication of the departure of Mr. Moss, now wish to bite the hand of the man who fed them so they sent him forth to issue their warning. What we have here, in the words of Cool Hand Luke, is a case of contractor extortion. What we need are more expensive Miami lawyers.

Ed Foster

Mr. Attorney, the City made declarations that hydrogen sulfide is an island-wide problem based on known historical evidence. Evidence that hydrogin sulfide exists in large amounts below the surface of Marco Island is an established "fact". A "fact" validated and verified recently by another City contractor ENVIORN. Our "qualified" sewer contractors,had a "reasonable" expectation to find high levels of hydrogen sulfide gas on their worksites. Dangerous levels previously published by OSHA as being dangerous to human life are evidenced by numerous deaths and near deaths investigated by OSHA during it's history. As a contractor experienced enough to win the bid process and to dig and work with "sewers" the City had a "resonable" expectation to believe the contractor would know what these dangerous levels were. When the contractor's own employee experienced a life threatening mishap, the Contractor had a "resonable" expectation to encounter "life-threatening levels" of hydrogen sulfide gas while continuing the project. A local Doctor publicaly recently announced that he had compiled data that more than 800 of our citizens had suffered upper respritory effects. As his patents lived within neighborhoods impacted by sewer construction, the doctor "reasonably" suspected hydrogen sulfide gas to be the cause. Local media published the doctor's suspicions. As a result of the media coverage, the contractor had a "resonable" expection to take extra precautions to protect our citizens and their employees. The new City Council needs to take another look at the legal advice it is receiving. It appears we have paid for an opinion that has resulted in weakening our contracting process. City contracts are boiler plated and have been tested in our courts. If the legal advice is solid then our contracts are no longer boiler plate. Someone in our contracting office or City administration has weakened them. The Council must act immediately to strengthen our construction contracts to protect our city from jeoprady. If these boiler plate contracts have been deliberately weakened in any way without direction of the Council, The person responsible should be fired immediately. Someone is responsible for this mess. It is not the people of Marco Island.

we need a new city attorney,he can go work for the contractor

what's the matter Joey, you don't like when people disagree with you? At least I have the guts to put my name on here. Maybe you should be Joey "NO NUTS"

Hey Joey "NO NUTS", with 742 blog entries your mouth is pretty big.

Need to focus on a couple of points here...regardless of what our city council, city manager and staff knows, Quality Enterprises is the supposed expert in the project. Otherwise we would be hiring day laborers to get this job done. Mr. Gabriel says that "the contractor could argue that it relied on the dewatering plan specifications provided by the city, which fails to reference any potential hydrogen sulfide issues relating to the dewatering operations". This would be like an electrician installing something wrong because the customer wanted it that way. It is the PROFESSIONAL'S responsibility to explain to the client what the scope of work should entail. Quality Enterprises should have more experience in digging ditches than any of our city leaders. And should be more aware of what is under the surface than anyone else. This can not possibly be the first time that ditches have been dug in an environment such as ours. Electricians know that if a house was built before a certain time the house would most likely not be up to code, they don't need to rip out walls to know this!

Fact of the matter is that (once again) someone at city hall is misspeaking. They are giving their own uninformed opinion in such a way that it will cause irreversble damage to the citizens of Marco Island. These unintended mistakes will be quoted as gospel by the contractor and used against us. And we will pay for it.

Why are we still comfortable at City Hall with constantly setting poor precedence? We've done it before with allowing the asbestos debacle to be paid for by the city. We've done it by allowing a councilperson to lie saying he had proof that the asbestos was planted by certain individuals then not holding him accountable (he should be disbarred and in jail). We've done it by allowing the Glon property to be used for an unintended use (for free). We've done it by council behaving poorly towards the citizens (in public, at council meetings). We've allowed it by stepping in on the H2S situation and attempting to remedy it ourselves, thereby transferring the responsibility away from the responsible party. Instead of saying "Mr. Contractor, you have a health issue here. Stop and fix it before you continue." We have a Homer Simpson wanna-be making some assinine contraption. Once again making it appear that the city (not QE) is responsible. 'The city acts like it is responsible for the situation so it must be' is the defense QE will use. Now lets let them also say that city council has been informed by their legal representation that QE is not responsible. Even if its a lie.